Hwang Ji-young The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology professor and his colleagues used nanowires made from a crystalline material called perovskite to recreate the structure of insect eyes, without the need for precision-fabricated lenses.Their design consists of a 3D-printed hemisphere about 2 centimeters in diameter with 121 openings, each 1 millimeter in diameter, that act like a simple pinhole camera. In each hole, perovskite nanowires direct light from a very narrow field of view onto a light sensor, and electronics combine the results into a single frame. The prosthetic eyes can produce images with a 140-degree field of view, which can be extended to 220 degrees by stacking pairs.
Huang said this could have significant benefits in certain robotic applications, such as when swarms of drones fly in tight formations. “They need to maintain a distance from each other, perhaps several meters, so they need to know their exact positions and the relative speeds at which they are moving towards and away from each other,” he says. “That’s why compound eyes are important. They give you a wider field of vision and make you more sensitive to movement.”
The researchers also built a pair of small artificial compound eyes with 37 light sensors. They were able to attach the system to a quadcopter drone and use it to track a robotic dog on the ground.
Huang said the compound-eye design also has the advantages of being simple, lightweight and cheap, but it cannot completely replace traditional cameras. Instead, he believes these devices will provide supplemental data that can be useful to other machines, such as robots and self-driving cars.
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Source: www.newscientist.com