Artificial compound eye makes sense of natural world

In Optics Letters, researchers from Tianjin University in China report their new bio-inspired compound eye, which looks and works like those found in the natural world.

Compound eyes consist of hundreds to thousands of ommatidia, which are repeating units that act as a separate visual receptor.

Compound eyes inspire miniature lenses with greater scope

"Imitating the vision system of insects has led us to believe that they might detect the trajectory of an object based on the light intensity coming from that object rather than using precise images like human vision," said Le Song, a member of the research team. "This motion-detection method requires less information, allowing the insect to quickly react to a threat."

The researchers are said to have used single point diamond turning to create 169 microlenses on the surface of the compound eye. Each microlens had a radius of about 1mm, creating a component measuring about 20mm that could detect objects from a 90-degree field of view. The fields of view of adjacent microlenses overlapped in the same way that ommatidia do for most insects.