Scientists from the Center of Excellence "Cognitive Interaction Technology" at the University of Bielefeld (Germany) have answered this question by creating an imaging system that mimics the field of view of a bee , allowing us to observe the world from the point of view of insects .
The research, published in IOP Publishing's Bioinspiration & Biomimetics , explains the process of building an artificial bee eye , which consists of lightweight mirror lenses attached to a USB camcorder . In this way the "eye" achieves a field of vision comparable to that of the bee. The camera has already made it possible to capture "unique" images, according to the study authors.
"Despite the limitations of our model on the spatial resolution of bee eyes, we are confident that it will be useful for many purposes such as simulating bees in virtual environments and testing bee navigation strategies in robots." , the authors explain, that in the future, they hope to also include ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the new artificial eye to completely recreate the insect's color vision, which is important for recognizing flowers, as well as the polarized vision it uses to be guided in nature.
