Tiny camera lets you look like a bug

Researchers in the US have borrowed from insects, building a unique camera that copies the multi-facetted eye of a fly. Its bubble-shaped lens features 180 microlenses giving it a 180 degree view of the world.

Not much bigger than a fly itself, the camera could be used for wide-eyed surveillance or to provide very high quality imaging during endoscopic procedures in hospital.

“What we have, in a sense, is many small eyes on one big eye,” said Prof Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University in Illinois who collaborated with Prof John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and others. They published their findings this evening in the journal Nature.

Each of the 180 elements is a separate imaging system with individual microlenses and microscale photodetectors. When working all together they can take a clear picture with a single snap and give a wide angle window on the world.

The hemispherical camera lens is completely flexible and can twist and bend without breaking. This makes it a promising addition to the technology used for advanced surgery, the authors believe. Two of the lenses can also be put back to back to achieve a full 360 degree view, they add.

The lens acts very much like an insect’s eye, Prof Rogers said. “Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution.”

The 180 lens camera is comparable to the eyes of fire ants and bark beetles, but can’t yet match a fly eye which has thousands of individual segments, the researchers write.

Building the complex camera lens was an engineering challenge involving optics, electronics, fabrication and modelling.