Research of a Lensless Artificial Compound Eye

Abstract

One of the challenges in designing an artificial compound eye (ACE) is the manufacturing  and assembly of the ommatidia lenses. The paper presents three lensless ACE designs based on light guiding structure and an array image detector. In the solid design, deep holes pointed to different directions in space act as artificial ommatidia. Low image resolution of the solid design is improved by the shell design, where the artificial ommatidia are created within the perforated shell. In the third design, artificial ommatidia are created between the pinhole and pixels on the image detector. The best image performance is achieved with the third pinhole design. An array of pinholes on a single image detector can improve the environment perception by combining the images and assessing the object distance based on image disparity. The proposed lensless design can be easily manufactured and miniaturised to the microchip scale, and finds potential application in small and lightweight autonomous robots.