Artificial compound eyes: different concepts and their application for ultraflat image acquisition sensors

Natural compound eyes combine small eye volumes with a large field of view at the cost of comparatively low spatial resolution. For small invertebrates such as flies or moths, compound eyes are the perfectly adapted solution to obtaining sufficient visual information about their environment without overloading their brains with the necessary image processing. However, to date little effort has been made to adopt this principle in optics. Classical imaging always had its archetype in natural single aperture eyes which, for example, human vision is based on. But a high-resolution image is not always required. Often the focus is on very compact, robust and cheap vision systems. The main question is consequently: what is the better approach for extremely miniaturized imaging systems—just scaling of classical lens designs or being inspired by alternative imaging principles evolved by nature in the case of small insects? In this paper, it is shown that such optical systems can be achieved using state-of-the-art micro-optics technology. This enables the generation of highly precise and uniform microlens arrays and their accurate alignment to the subsequent optics-, spacing- and optoelectronics structures. The results are thin, simple and monolithic imaging devices with a high accuracy of photolithography. Two different artificial compound eye concepts for compact vision systems have been investigated in detail: the artificial apposition compound eye and the cluster eye. Novel optical design methods and characterization tools were developed to allow the layout and experimental testing of the planar micro-optical imaging systems, which were fabricated for the first time by micro-optics technology. The artificial apposition compound eye can be considered as a simple imaging optical sensor while the cluster eye is capable of becoming a valid alternative to classical bulk objectives but is much more complex than the first system.

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“…• [199]. A spherical microlens with the same paraxial focal length of 750.8µm was fabricated for comparison.…”

Section: Spot Size Determination Under Oblique Incidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A monolithic APCO without opaque walls between the channels (Fig. 4.1 (a)) is fabricated by microoptics technology [199,202,203]. The APCO is adopted and attached to a CMOS sensor array which is capable of on-chip analog image processing [204].…”

Section: Artificial Apposition Compound Eye Objective (Apco)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Micro-optical artificial compound eyes

Duparré¹,

Wippermann²

2006

Bioinspir. Biomim.

152

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“…An alternate method enabling wide AOV image acquisition is based on a single-camera multiple-lens optical sensors system [4][5][6]. Devices taking advantage of this technique and presenting very large AOVs are mainly inspired by the insect faceted eyes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These channels capture light within a defined angle and transmit it to light sensitive receptor cells. In [4], artificial insect eyes, cluster eyes and artificial apposition compound eyes (APCO) are fabricated using wafer-scale techniques. In [5], the AOV of eye clusters and APCOs is improved to 124 o by using two additional micro-lenses in each channel, thereby causing significant distortion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced Omnidirectional Image Reconstruction Algorithm and Its Real-Time Hardware

Akın

Erdede

Afshari

et al. 2012

2012 15th Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design

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Abstract-Omnidirectional stereoscopy and depth estimation are complex problems of image processing to which the Panoptic camera offers a novel solution. The Panoptic camera is a biologically-inspired vision sensor made of multiple cameras. It is a polydioptric system mimicking the eyes of flying insects where multiple imagers, each with a distinct focal point, are distributed over a hemisphere. Recently, the omnidirectional image reconstruction algorithm (OIR) and its real-time hardware implementation have been proposed for the Panoptic camera. This paper presents an enhanced omnidirectional image reconstruction algorithm (EOIR) and its real-time implementation. The proposed EOIR algorithm provides improved realistic omnidirectional images and residuals compared to OIR. As a processing core of EOIR, 57% of the available slice resources in a Virtex 5 FPGA are consumed. The proposed platform provides the high bandwidth required to simultaneously process data originating from 40 cameras, and reconstruct omnidirectional images of 256x1024 pixels at 25 fps. This proposed hardware and algorithmic enhancements enable advanced real-time applications including omnidirectional image reconstruction, 3D model construction and depth estimation.

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“…It has been shown that the overall imaging performance of optical sensors can be enhanced by the modification of incoming light waves (predetection filtering) in tandem with electronic signal processing (postdetection filtering) [5]. The concept and experimental verification of a computational imaging system called TOMBO, which draws inspiration from nature's design of the compound eyes of arthropods, has been presented [4,6]. TOMBO uses multiplex imaging sensors that also rely on the joint functioning of optics and electronics to obtain visual information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational imaging systems: joint design and end-to-end optimality

et al. 2008

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A framework is proposed for optimal joint design of the optical and reconstruction filters in a computational imaging system. First, a technique for the design of a physically unconstrained system is proposed whose performance serves as a universal bound on any realistic computational imaging system. Increasing levels of constraints are then imposed to emulate a physically realizable optical filter. The proposed design employs a generalized Benders' decomposition method to yield multiple globally optimal solutions to the nonconvex optimization problem. Structured, closed-form solutions for the design of observation and reconstruction filters, in terms of the system input and noise autocorrelation matrices, are presented. Numerical comparison with a state-of-the-art optical systems shows the advantage of joint optimization and concurrent design.

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Artificial compound eyes: different concepts and their application for ultraflat image acquisition sensors

Cited by 36 publications

References 18 publications

Micro-optical artificial compound eyes

Micro-optical artificial compound eyes

Enhanced Omnidirectional Image Reconstruction Algorithm and Its Real-Time Hardware

Computational imaging systems: joint design and end-to-end optimality

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