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New "Bug Eyed" Camera Under Development
9th Nov 2008
A new tiny bug-eyed camera which provides a field of view six times greater than a conventional camera, is being tested by researchers at a BAE systems at Great Baddow in the UK.
The experts at BAE Systems revealed that this new cameara system, called "BugEye" was developed primarily for use on missiles as because it has a wider field of view they are less likely to lose their chosen targets.
However the researchers have mentioned that this prototype camera is so small that it can also be used on endoscopes, which will give an improved field of view in keyhole surgery which in turn will make such operations faster and safer.
Leslie Laycock of BAE Systems reported that many researchers have attempted to build smaller and lighter wide-angle cameras in the past by copying the design of an insect’s eye which provides a wide field of view as it useds many lenses, but they were not successful, the resolution of the final image being too poor to be used effectively.
Laycock continued to say that the lenses are polished on to the end of a bundle of millions of glass fibres which have been fused together, these fibres then directing the all the images onto separate areas of a flat light-sensitive chip, where image-processing software is used to stitch them together.
According to Laycock, the BugEye is about the size of a sugar cube, and is only one-tenth the weight of systems using conventional fish-eye lenses or so called moving platforms.
Emma Johnson, a biomimetics expert from the University of Reading in the UK, thinks that the new system can lead to a “significant improvement”, and allow the field of view of cameras to approach that of human vision. (ANI)
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New Scientist Article on Bug Eyed Camera
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