Scientists Develop First Working Compound-Eye Camera Prototype

Scientists have developed a digital camera that is based on the concept of an insect's eye, comprised of 180 small lenses which can cover a wide-angle view, according to a report from CNN.

Scientists bring together a biological concept and electronics, offering a whole new idea of advanced digital camera technology. Inspired by an insect's eye, researchers have developed a digital camera which functions similarly. The curved digital camera technology can be useful in various fields where wide-viewing angles could come handy, such as in endoscopic investigations of the human body or advanced surveillance.

The compound-eye camera prototype comprises of 180 micro lenses placed on top of silicon photodetectors. Scientists used flexible polymer to develop the curved camera lens. Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois said that the "whole thing is stretchy and thin, and we blow it up like a balloon" to form a curved shape lens like an insect's eye.

Scientists compare the digital camera to an eye of a fire ant or a bark beetle, which has 180 optical units or light-sensing structures called ommatidia. Each ommatidium consists of a cone and a lens, which funnels the light to a photosensitive organ and is placed in a slightly different direction.

This gives an insect a wide field of view with different angles and immense depth of field. A bunch of these ommatidia are held together, forming the hemispherical eye of an insect. Different insects have different number of ommatidia, for example: a praying mantis has about 15,000 and the dragonfly approximately 28,000, while the worker ant has only 100.

"We feel that the insect world provides extremely impressive examples of engineering -- in the vision, flight, power and sensing systems. I, personally, have been intrigued by the insect eye for as long as I can remember," said Rogers, who helped in the study.

After developing a prototype, Rogers says, this gives scope to develop a camera with higher resolution by adding more artificial ommatidia. Currently, the camera can only take black and white pictures, but Rogers hopes to modify the design to develop a color version.

The curved lens technology is the first of a kind evolving from flat sensor and single camera lens. It can cover a 160-degree view at a glance, with all areas within the range being in focus. Dr Jianliang Xiao from the University of Colorado at Boulder says that this technology can "be used in surveillance cameras," he says, adding, "One device of this kind could see 180 degrees. If you had two, you could then conceivably see the whole field of view."

The innovative research was published in this week's journal Nature.