Designers often draw inspiration from nature. We see it in colours, textures, and patterns – but it’s not often we see cameras designed with Mother Nature in mind. But that’s exactly what researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are doing. They just developed a digital camera that’s inspired by the compound eyes of arthropods. Arthropods, for those of us (like me) that don’t know – include spiders, insects, and crustaceans.
Human eyes see with a single ‘lens’, whereas compound eyes are made up of numerous tiny visual units. That means the vision of arthropods is more sophisticated than us because of their ability to view wide angles, perceive motion with clarity, and see an infinite depth of field.
The bug-eyed camera contains 180 artificial “ommatidia”, which are structures that sense light and are what make up arthropod eyes. That sounds quite remarkable, but the team of is calling it a “low-end insect eye”. Why? Because fire ants, for example, have 180 ommatidia too. Dragonflies, on the other hand, have 20,000 ommatidia.
(Via Mashable)