Abstract
In most animal species, vision is mediated by compound eyes,
which offer lower resolution than vertebrate single-lens eyes, but
significantly larger fields of view with negligible distortion and spherical
aberration, as well as high temporal resolution in a tiny package. Compound
eyes are ideally suited for fast panoramic motion perception. Engineering a
miniature artificial compound eye is challenging because it requires accurate
alignment of photoreceptive and optical components on a curved surface. Here,
we describe a unique design method for biomimetic compound eyes featuring a
panoramic, undistorted field of view in a very thin package. The design
consists of three planar layers of separately produced arrays, namely, a
microlens array, a neuromorphic photodetector array, and a flexible printed
circuit board that are stacked, cut, and curved to produce a mechanically flexible
imager. Following this method, we have prototyped and characterized an
artificial compound eye bearing a hemispherical field of view with embedded and
programmable low-power signal processing, high temporal resolution, and local
adaptation to illumination.