[dslkfjg]

The article is confusing. It appears they're leveraging implicit information in the spectrum of the light reflected from objects to settle on the object's identity.

Then they're encoding that information using the light spectrum again - but not the same wavelengths or information as they used to detect them in the first place.

So you have two things being run together. One is the identification of objects and the other is the encoding of information about those objects so that a single pixel detector is all that is needed to read what has been encoded.

Leverging the light coming off objects and processing it using diffusion filters to "learn" or "reason" about what the object is is a sort of side channel attack on the problem of object identification wrt to current approaches.

Encoding thngs into a light so only a single pixel is needed to carry information is an encoding trick.

If I misunderstood anything- entirely possible- feel free to correct.