Compound-Eye Camera Module as Small as 8.5 $\times$ 8.5 $\times$ 6.0 mm for 26 k-Resolution Depth Map and 2-Mpix 2D Imaging

Abstract

To promote the widespread use of light-field computational cameras, downsizing of the system is essential. This paper presents an 8.5 mm  8.5 mm  6.0 mm tiny compound-eye camera module based on the light field. The camera module is composed of a single-lens unit of a 63 field-of-view (FOV) diagonal, a microlens array (MLA) glued on an 8-Mpix color CMOS sensor (1/3.2[ format), and a read-out substrate. The captured raw MLA image is capable of constructing a 26 000-resolution depth image and refocused 2-Mpix 2D RGB images. We also demonstrated that our Bimage height calibration[ and Boptical scoring[ improved the accuracy of the measured depth and revealed it to be effective for wide-angle FOV optics, such as the lens unit used in our tiny camera module that has the potential for widespread application. Analysis of the depth accuracy proved that the measured depth accuracy with our camera was higher than 90% in the depth range from 5 to 50 cm at the image center.

Artificial compound eye: a survey of the state-of-the-art

“…The prototype of (Tanida et al 2000) planar artificial compound eyes is either apposition compound eye or superposition compound eye. To date, a lot of planar artificial compound eyes have been proposed (Tanida et al 2000;Duparré et al 2004b, a;Duparré and Wippermann 2006;Duparré and Völkel 2006;Duparré et al 2005dDuparré et al , a, 2004cDuparré et al , 2005bWippermann et al 2005;Brückner et al 2007Brückner et al , 2008Druart et al 2008;Brückner et al 2010a, b;Bräuer et al 2011;Brückner et al 2011;Meyer et al 2011;Stollberg et al 2009;Duparré et al 2008;Druart et al 2009;Di et al 2009;Leitel et al 2010;Ueno et al 2013;Brückner et al 2010c;Ogata et al 1994;Carr et al 2004;Hornsey et al 2004;Kinoshita et al 2005;Christensen et al 2006;Wippermann et al 2006;Yang et al 2009;Sieler et al 2010;Fallah and Karimzadeh 2010;Dunkel et al 2014;Belay et al 2014). In what follows, several typical planar artificial compound eyes are selected to discuss the design principle.…”

Fabrication of Microlens Array and Its Application: A Review

“…Figure 10 shows the current light field of cameras, including the camera arrays developed by Stanford [67,68]; Integrated lens array designed by the Adobe company [69]; light field camera and microscope developed by Lytro [25,70]; 3D light field camera produced by Raytrix [71] and compound eye camera module developed by the Toshiba company [72]. Compared with the camera array based devices, the microlens based devices have more potential in the market because of their light and compact structure.…”

I1.2: Invited Paper: Switchable Liquid Crystal Micro Lens Arrays for the Light‐Field Camera Application

“…Light-field cameras, which are also called plenoptic or compound-eye cameras, are attractive because the captured images can be used together with light-field information to extract depth information and to virtually refocus an image by synthesizing the image from the raw image data [1,2]. A lightfield camera is composed of a main lens, an MLA, and an image sensor ( Fig.…”

“…1) between images from adjacent microlenses. The depth information can be estimated by calculating the shift from the image matching [2]. However, a known drawback of these camera systems is a lower spatial resolution of the final twodimensional (2D) image in comparison with the resolution of the image sensor [1,2].…”

“…The depth information can be estimated by calculating the shift from the image matching [2]. However, a known drawback of these camera systems is a lower spatial resolution of the final twodimensional (2D) image in comparison with the resolution of the image sensor [1,2]. A mode-switchable camera that utilizes a switchable MLA has, therefore, been considered as a good alternative to the conventional fixed lens arrangement by using quartz or imprinted resin.…”