Bug's eye camera and bee
A new digital camera developed by scientists takes its inspiration from the compound eyes of insects.
Bug's eye camera and fly
Insect eyes have a wide field of view, high motion sensitivity and an infinite depth of field (the distance between objects that appear sharp in an image).
Bug's eye camera and ant
The camera contains hundreds of tiny photo sensors that resemble structures in an insect's eye called ommatidia.
The camera assembly
Each imaging unit, or ommatidium, consists of a tiny lens on a supporting post that conveys light down to a silicon photodetector.
The camera assembly
To make the camera, flexible arrays of lenses and photodetectors were assembled in flat, 2D sheets. The sheets were then bonded together and inflated into a hemispherical shape.
Side view of camera
Simulations suggest that camera has about a 160-degree field of view.
Better cameras
The current camera has 180 imaging units, or ommatidia, but the researchers say that number could be scaled up to millions.
Real eye vs. camera eye
It's hard to know how an insect really sees the world, but simulations of the new camera suggest it creates something similar, composed of many small parts combined into a larger image.
