April 28, 2006
The Eyes Have It
Bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley's Sensor and Actuator Center have created low-cost artificial compound eyes that are similar in size, shape, and structure to an insect's compound eye.
Like pins in a pincushion, or a dragonfly's 30,000 ommatidia, individual artificial ommatidia are oriented at slightly different angles. The team, led by Luke P. Lee, has shown that the lenses and waveguides of the artificial eyes focus and conduct light in the same way as an insect's eye.
Lee and his team came up with is a low-cost, easy-to-replicate method of creating pinhead-sized polymer resin domes spiked with thousands of light-guiding channels, each topped with its own lens. Not only are these units packed together in the same hexagonal, honeycomb pattern as in an insect's compound eye, but each is also similar in size, design, shape, and function to an ommatidium, the individual sensory unit of a compound eye.
These eyes can eventually be used as cameras or sensory detectors to capture visual or chemical information from a wider field of vision than previously possible, according Lee. Potential applications include surveillance, high-speed motion detection, environmental sensing, medical procedures, and a number of clinical treatments that can be controlled by implanted light delivery devices.
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