Researchers Develop First Curvilinear Camera

Credit: Beckman Institute, University of IllinoisResearchers from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have develop a curvilinear camera, much like the human eye, with the significant feature of a zoom capability, unlike the human eye.

The "eyeball camera" has a 3.5x optical zoom, takes sharp images, is inexpensive to make and is only the size of a nickel.

Future applications include night-vision surveillance, robotic vision, endoscopic imaging and consumer electronics.

"We were inspired by the human eye, but we wanted to go beyond the human eye," said Yonggang Huang, Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. "Our goal was to develop something simple that can zoom and capture good images, and we've achieved that."

The tiny camera combines the best of both the human eye and an expensive single-lens reflex (SLR) camera with a zoom lens. It has the simple lens of the human eye, allowing the device to be small, and the zoom capability of the SLR camera without the bulk and weight of a complex lens. The key is that both the simple lens and photodetectors are on flexible substrates, and a hydraulic system can change the shape of the substrates appropriately, enabling a variable zoom.