UK team to lead research into “artificial eye” technology

Funded by EPSRC, The three-year £1.3m project, which also involves King's College London and University College London, will explore potential applications of newly developed “neuromorphic” sensors: devices which mimic the way a mammal’s eye processes information.

Explaining the drawback of existing imaging systems the leader of the Kingston team, Professor Maria Martini, said: "Conventional camera technology captures video in a series of separate frames, or images, which can be a waste of resources if there is more motion in some areas than in others,” she said. "Where you have a really dynamic scene, like an explosion, you end up with fast-moving sections not being captured accurately due to frame-rate and processing power restrictions and too much data being used to represent areas that remain static.”

In contrast, the neuromorphic sensors – developed for the project by sensor specialist iniLabs - mimic the mammalian eye by sampling different parts of the scene at different rates, acquiring information only when there are changes in the light conditions.