Featured image: Scanning electron microscope image of an eye on a fruit fly. Image is a high magnification view of part of the eye. CREDIT: Dartmouth College. SOURCE: Wikipedia Commons. (Public Domain)
From IEEE Spectrum By Jeremy Hsu Posted
Engineers make a tiny compound eye
New “insect eye” cameras could someday help flying drones see into every corner of a battlefield or give tiny medical scopes an all-around view inside the human body. A team of researchers from the United States has constructed such a camera, which offers an almost 180-degree field of view using hundreds of tiny lenses.
The centimeter-wide digital camera has 180 microlenses—roughly what fire ants or bark beetles have in their compound eyes—placed on a hemispherical array. Researchers hope their design will eventually lead to insect-eye cameras that exceed even nature’s blueprints, according to a report in the 2 May issue of the journal Nature. . . . Read Complete Report
