A bug's view: Digital camera lens inspired by insects

A group of researchers have discovered a way to make a camera lens that mimics the ocular systems of dragonflies, praying mantises, bees and other insects.

There are many benefits to this type of design. According to the study, the insects' eyes are naturally designed to allow an exceptionally wide-angle view, with low aberrations, motion sensors, and a nearly infinite depth of field. That list of qualities is what made researchers interested in copying the design.

The insects' eyes are actually made of several smaller eyes, called ommatidium. These are then made up of a corneal lens, a crystalline cone, and a light-sensitive organ at the bottom of the eye. The complicated combination of these items is what makes the little guys' sight so precise.

"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," John A. Rogers, a Swanlund Chair Professor at the University of Illinois explained in a statement. "When implemented with large arrays of 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 new camera's use a large amount of tiny focusing lenses proportioned over a hemispherical layout, similar to that of the arthropods. Also, the scientists used soft rubbery optics and silicone that are more similar to the insect's actual eyes than the typical hard plastic used in electronics. They needed to use these materials in order to make the lens successful.

"A critical feature of our fly's eye cameras is that they incorporate integrated microlenses, photodetectors, and electronics on hemispherically curved surfaces," Jianliang Xiao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "To realize this outcome, we used soft, rubbery optics bonded to detectors/electronics in mesh layouts that can be stretched and deformed, reversibly and without damage."

The researchers camera lens study appeared in an article, "Digital Cameras with Designs Inspired by the Arthropod Eye," published in the May 2, 2013 issue of Nature.