Mimicking the complicated eye of a fly, a team of American scientists has created uA hemispherical digital camera with 180 small microlenseswhich is capable of obtaining images with a very wide angle of view (180 degrees) and unprecedented definition. “What we have are many small eyes in one large eye,” explains Yonggang Huang, co-author of the work, adding that each small eye has a microlens and a micro-scale photodetector that forms an independent image. When the 180 “microvisions” are put together, the camera creates a single portrait with a wide angle of view, fully in focus and sharp and without any aberration. The biggest challenge for the researchers was designinga mesh and integrate into it the microelectronic components in a curved surface but without breaking them, using small squares with photodetectors and electronic components. The image obtained in this way is very different from that captured by the flat CCD of the commercial cameras that we usually handle. “Imaging technology so far is flat, we have created a curvilinear system“, puntualiza Huang.
“Nature has developed and perfected this way of seeing during billions of years of evolution,” add the authors of the work in reference to the eyes of arthropods, from which they have been inspired. Indeed, these animals have severalomatidiosor conical-shaped basic visual units that together form a compound eye.
The scientists, who have made their creation known in the magazineNature, suggest that combining two of these hemispherical cameras could create 360º images, very useful for example in medicine, to make endoscopies and study the digestive tract. Or, why not, to develop artificial retinas and bionic eyes.
