Image sensor and lenses, next to a coin for comparison.
Credit: Simon Thiele
A bird of
prey on the hunt must be able to clearly see faraway objects while remaining aware of threats in its peripheral vision. In some cases, that's also true for a drone — even one so small that its eye must fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen. Now, a team of engineers has developed a camera that could provide eagle-eye vision to micro-drones.
The new camera could be used for medical procedures, such as endoscopies, or to build micro-robots specially designed to measure, explore or survey, the researchers said.
Previously, the engineers used a technique called femtosecond laser writing to 3D-print miniature lenses directly onto an image-sensing chip. To create sharp images like an eagle's eye, the researchers used this process to print clusters of four lenses at a time. The lenses range from wide to narrow and low to high resolution, and images can then be combined into a bull's-eye shape with a sharp image at the center, similar to how eagles see. [Photo Future: 7 High-Tech Ways to Share Images] https://www.livescience.com/57904-micro-camera-sees-with-eagle-eye-vision.html
