MINIATURE robotic aircraft could soon have insect-like eyes to go with their insect-like wings. Neurobiologists have developed an artificial bee eye, with a 280-degree field of vision, which should enable robots to see more of the world around them.
and colleagues at Bielefeld University in Germany wanted to capture the widest view possible using a single camera. To do this, the team used a combination of mirrors and lenses.
In their set-up, a dome-shaped mirror, with a lens at its centre, was placed 20 millimetres in front of the camera鈥檚 charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor chip. The mirror鈥檚 convex surface faced towards the camera. The lens focuses light from in front of the camera onto the CCD to create an image with a 110-degree field of view. Simultaneously, the convex face of the mirror captures a reflection of the world behind the camera and focuses this light onto the CCD, widening the field of view to 280 degrees.
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鈥淎 lens focuses light from in front of the camera, while a convex mirror focuses light from behind鈥�
A computer algorithm stitches the two sets of images together. This composite image is then passed through a system that mimics the several thousand hexagonal facets of the honeybee鈥檚 compound eyes, which transforms the 280-degree image into a 2D one. This reduces the resolution of the image, but makes it easier for whoever is controlling the robot to interpret the picture (Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, ).
