Insect eyes see the dark half

By mimicking how insects see, Australian research could lead to digital videos in which every detail can be seen, even in conditions with a huge contrast in brightness. The technique would solve a critical problem for surveillance cameras, where the clarity of images is everything.

According to Dr Russell Brinkworth, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Adelaide, even a tiny insect brain can outperform any current artificial visual system. Like humans, they can see detail in light and dark at the same time.

Traditional cameras use a single average light setting to control the brightness of an image, which works if there are similar levels of lighting over the whole scene. But it does not work so well if some parts are much brighter than others.

In nature, the individual cells of the eye adjust to a part of the image independently in order to capture the maximum amount of information about the scene. This means that even in difficult lighting conditions, such as a person standing in front of a window, you can see both the person's face and the scenery outside at the same time, something a traditional camera cannot do.