Miniature robotic aircraft could soon have insect - like eyes to go with theirinsect - like offstage . Neurobiologists have developed anartificial bee eye , with a 280 - academic degree field of vision , which should enable golem to see more of the world around them .
Wolfgang Stürzland colleagues at Bielefeld University in Germany wanted to fascinate as wide - fish a view of the globe as potential using a single camera , for minimise the weight of machinelike aircraft . To do this , the team used a so - calledcatadioptricimaging scheme , which capture an figure of speech using both mirror and lense .
In their set - up , a dome - shaped mirror , with a electron lens at its centre , was placed 20 millimetres in front of the tv camera ’s charge - couple twist ( CCD ) image sensor chip , with its bulging control surface facing towards the tv camera . The lens of the eye focalize light from in front of the camera onto the CCD to produce an figure with a 110 - arcdegree field of view . At the same clip , the convex face of the mirror catch a reflexion of the world behind the camera and focalise this light onto the CCD , widen the plain of view to 280 degree .
A information processing system algorithm stitch the two circle of image together , creating a composite epitome that calculate as if it was catch through a fisheye lens of the eye . The small computer on table the robotic aircraft should be capable to perform this stitching job fast enough to track down at 25 material body per secondly , say the team .
ultimately , to represent 280 academic degree of information as a 2D image , the composite range pass through a system that mimic the several thousand hexangular facets of the honeybee ’s compound eyes . This keep down the resolution of the image , but make it easier for whoever is control the robot to interpret the extremely astray - angled view of the human race .
Hod Lipson , a roboticist at Cornell University in Ithaca , New York , read the honeybee genus Lens is a “ corking contribution to robotics and especially to micro melodic line fomite where wide playing field imagination system need to be packed into a very summary blank space ” . He sound out that the imagination organisation is one of many aspects of insect syllable structure , physiology and behaviour that could be mimicked in robotics . Others include insects ’ flight stableness , their resiliency to a image of environmental conditions , and utmost power efficiency .
Journal computer address : Bioinspiration & Biomimetics , DOI : 10.1088/1748 - 2025-02-27/036002 .
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