Biologically inspired artificial eyes and photonics

Kim, Jae-Jun; Liu, Hewei; Ashtiani, Alireza Ousati; Jiang, Hongrui

doi:10.1088/1361-6633/ab6a42

Cited by 33 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 172 publications

(214 reference statements)

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“…[321,322] The human eye's focusing mechanism and optical structure has motivated the design and development of various artificial tunable (liquid encapsulated) lenses. [318,323] Liquid is encapsulated by a polymer membrane to form a deformable oblate, spherical, or hemispherical lens. Liquid mediums provide a lighter alternative with higher optical transmittance than the conventional optical glass lens.…”

Section: Photoreceptorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, their implantation would cause retina and optic nerve damage. [318,323] Recent designs are semiconductor nanomembrane-based, which are soft, flexible, ultra-thin, and biocompatible. Initially, they are fabricated on a planar surface with intricate geometrical designs that avoid overlap when deformed into a hemispherical shape.…”

Section: Photoreceptorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

et al. 2020

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This review covers recent advancements in the field of bioinspired soft robotics, with a primary focus on the last 4 years (2017)(2018)(2019)(2020). The review serves as a toolbox for an interdisciplinary audience interested in the most recent bioinspired soft robotic technologies. In particular, it highlights and explores the vital components of soft robots, focusing on the enabling mechanisms and their biological inspirations. The first section discusses the materials used to fabricate soft bio inspired robots. Soft bioinspired actuation and sensing are then discussed, exploring their capabilities and implementation by researchers. Existing challenges and future potentials of bioinspired soft robots are addressed in the concluding remarks. This review provides engineers and scientists with the latest technological advancements and information needed for designing and developing the next generation of soft bioinspired robotic systems. The future applications of these robots will be grand and limitless. Materials Used for Bioinspired Sensors and ActuatorsClassical robotic systems are comprised of rigid bodies, actuators, and sensors. Unfortunately, many of these well-developed actuators and sensors are not transferable to soft bodies. Thus, researchers working in soft robotics need to reinvent actuators and sensors for soft moving bodies. Biological organisms can be an excellent inspiration for designing these soft actuators and sensors, allowing for their integration in both soft and rigid bodies. The design process of soft actuators and sensors have to be initiated with material selection and composition, for they are foundations upon which the actuators and sensors will be built around. Presently, a diversified list of materials has been used in the development of soft robotic systems. This section will cover some of the latest advancements in the last 4 years in the area of material selection and composition for the design and development of soft bioinspired actuators and sensors.During the past 4 years, researchers have produced soft bioinspired actuators and sensors using biological material such as muscle tissue, [23,24] and plant fibers; [25] carbon-based materials such as graphite and graphene oxide (GO) [26][27][28][29][30][31] and carbon nanotubes (CN); [32,33] hydrogel materials such as poly(Nisopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM), [34,35] liquid crystal elastomers (LCE), [36] dielectric elastomers (DE), [37] and ionic polymermetal composites (IPMC). [38] An overview of these materials (Figure 1), along with their underlying mechanisms, are discussed below.Biological systems can perform complex tasks with high compliance levels. This makes them a great source of inspiration for soft robotics. Indeed, the union of these fields has brought about bioinspired soft robotics, with hundreds of publications on novel research each year. This review aims to survey fundamental advances in bioinspired soft actuators and sensors with a focus on the progress between 2017 and 2020, providing a primer for the materials used i...

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Section: Photoreceptorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Photoreceptorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

et al. 2020

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“…Nature‐inspired optics that mimics the human eye enables soft tunable lens systems with reduced complexity, high compactness, and speed. [ 1,2 ] Realizing the essential functionality of an optical system with a single tunable lens represents a frugal approach with versatile potential applications, including vision systems for soft robotics, humanoids, or highly miniaturized optical systems. [ 3,4 ]…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Tunable Lenses Based on Zipping Electroactive Polymer Actuators

et al. 2020

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Compact and entirely soft optics with tunable and adaptive properties drive the development of life‐like soft robotic systems. Yet, existing approaches are either slow, require rigid components, or use high operating voltages of several kilovolts. Here, soft focus‐tunable lenses are introduced, which operate at practical voltages, cover a high range of adjustable focal lengths, and feature response times in the milliseconds range. The nature‐inspired design comprises a liquid‐filled elastomeric lens membrane, which is inflated by zipping electroactive polymers to tune the focal length. An analytic description of the tunable lens supports optimized designs and accurate prediction of the lens characteristics. Focal length changes between 22 and 550 mm (numerical aperture 0.14–0.005) within 260 ms, equal in performance to human eyes, are demonstrated for a lens with 3 mm aperture radius, while applying voltages below 500 V. The presented model, design rules, and fabrication methods address central challenges of soft electrostatic actuators and optical systems, and pave the way toward autonomous bio‐inspired robots and machines.

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“…The resulting outstanding visual performance enabled by this compound design has been widely exploited for a diverse range of applications such as endoscopic examination [8], robot navigation [9,10], and surveillance [11]. Natural compound eyes have inspired various optical systems with artificial microlens arrays [12][13][14][15][16][17][18], and a significant amount of research has been devoted to improving the fabrication and design of these systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microfluidic-assisted 3D-printed eye (MAP-eye): a biomimetic ommatidium array with direct full-colour 3D to 2D panoramic imaging and position tracking

Dai¹,

Zhang²,

Zhao³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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After half a billion years of evolution, arthropods have developed sophisticated compound eyes with extraordinary visual capabilities that have inspired the development of artificial compound eyes. However, the limited 2D nature of most traditional fabrication techniques makes it challenging to directly replicate these natural systems. This work demonstrates a microfluidic-assisted 3D-printing technique that can be used to replicate a 3D compound eye. The microfluidic-assisted 3D-printed eye (MAP-eye) consists of 522 microlenses on a 5 mm-diameter hemisphere to mimic the 522 ommatidia of a natural compound eye. Each microlens is connected to the bottom planar surface of the MAP-eye via intracorporal refractive-index matched waveguides to mimic the rhabdoms of a natural eye. Full-colour 170º wide-angle panoramic views and position tracking of a point source have been realized by placing the MAP-eye directly on top of a commercial planar imaging sensor; the ability to use the MAP-eye with any commercially available imaging sensors presents numerous advantages including improved scalability, high sensitivity, and high-speed imaging. As a biomimetic analogue to naturally occurring compound eyes, the MAP-eye’s full-colour 3D to 2D mapping capability has the potential to enable a wide variety of applications from improving endoscopic imaging to enhancing machine vision for facilitating human–robot interactions and improving 3D displays.

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Biologically inspired artificial eyes and photonics

Cited by 33 publications

References 172 publications

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

Soft Tunable Lenses Based on Zipping Electroactive Polymer Actuators

Microfluidic-assisted 3D-printed eye (MAP-eye): a biomimetic ommatidium array with direct full-colour 3D to 2D panoramic imaging and position tracking

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