Imaging functions of new digital cameras inspired by bug’s view

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created the first digital cameras with designs that mimic those of ocular insects.

The cameras apply large arrays of tiny focusing lenses and miniaturized detectors in hemispherical layouts, just like eyes found in arthropods. The devices link soft, rubbery optics with high performance silicon electronics and detectors.

Eyes in arthropods use compound designs, in which arrays of smaller eyes cooperate to provide image perception. Each small eye, known as an ommatidium, comprise a corneal lens, a crystalline cone, and a light sensitive organ at the base. The entire system is configured to provide exceptional properties in imaging, many of which lie out of the reach of existing human-made cameras.

"Full 180 degree fields of view with zero aberrations can only be accomplished with image sensors that adopt hemispherical layouts -- much different than the planar CCD chips found in commercial cameras," Rogers explained. "When implemented with large arrays microlenses, each of which couples to an individual photodiode, this type of hemispherical design provides unmatched field of view and other powerful capabilities in imaging. Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution." The researchers described their breakthrough camera in an article, "Digital Cameras With Designs Inspired By the Arthropod Eye," published in the May 2, 2013 issue of Nature.