More from Baltimore citywire
More in Politics
Related Blogs
Archives
Social Share
Researchers Create the First Artificial Vision
Body
The semi-terrestrial species — known affectionately as the calling crab, as it appears to be beckoning with its huge claws — has amphibious imaging ability and an extremely wide field of view, as all current systems are limited to hemispherical. The new artificial eye, resembling a spherical current science daily, largely nondescript, small, black ball, makes meaning of its inputs through a mixture of materials that process and understand light.
The scientists combined an array of flat microlenses with a graded refractive index profile, and a flexible photodiode array with comb-shaped patterns, all wrapped on the 3D spherical structure. This configuration meant that light rays from multiple sources would always converge at the same spot on the image sensor, regardless of the refractive index of its surroundings.
A paper on this system, co-authored by Frédo Durand, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science and affiliate of the Computer Science and Artificial Ingelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and 15 others, appears in the July issue of the journal Nature Electronics.
Comments