Human eye inspires vision system for robotics

Developed by a team led by University of Maryland (UMD) computer scientists, the camera system mimics the involuntary movements used by the human eye to maintain clear and stable vision.

The team’s prototyping and testing of the camera - called the Artificial Microsaccade-Enhanced Event Camera (AMI-EV) – is detailed in Science Robotics.

“Event cameras are a relatively new technology better at tracking moving objects than traditional cameras, but today’s event cameras struggle to capture sharp, blur-free images when there’s a lot of motion involved,” said the paper’s lead author Botao He, a computer science Ph.D. student at UMD. “It’s a big problem because robots and many other technologies - such as self-driving cars - rely on accurate and timely images to react correctly to a changing environment. So, we asked ourselves: how do humans and animals make sure their vision stays focused on a moving object?”

The answer was microsaccades, which are small and quick eye movements that involuntarily occur when a person tries to focus their view. Through these minute yet continuous movements, the human eye can keep focus on an object and its visual textures - such as colour, depth and shadowing - accurately over time.