A tiny camera made of four different lenses 3D-printed on a chip can generate images with high resolution in the centre — similarly to the way the eyes of eagles and humans work.
Simon Thiele and his colleagues at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, printed multiple groups of four objective lenses onto a semiconductor image-sensor chip just a few millimetres wide (pictured). Each lens has a different field of view, and so can focus at various distances. A computer combines data from the lenses to form an image that has increasing resolution towards the middle. This mimics the vision of predators, which is more sharply focused in the centre and allows them to quickly spot prey.
With further improvements, the technology could be used in miniature drone cameras and for other applications, the authors say.
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3D-printed camera sees like an eagle. Nature 542, 395 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542395c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/542395c
