Just because we can mimic the look of a fly’s eye does not mean we know how the information is processed.
Housefly a model for new wide-angle lens
Bioengineers at the University of California at Berkeley have created artificial compound eyes, modeled after those of insects, that could one day be used to broaden the field of vision for cameras and sensors, even beyond fish-eye lenses, according to the researchers.
The research could lead to wide-area cameras for ultrathin cell phones in the next few years, according to Luke Lee, professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley.
Mimicing the structure of a fly’s eye does not mean we actually know how the fly processes that information. For example, I think that the following could be more representative of the processing going on inside the fly’s head:
By inserting a microlens array between the main lens and the photosensor, their “light field camera” takes one shot, but also captures information about light conditions. And you can later compute “photographs in which subjects at every depth appear in finely tuned focus.”
Resembling the multi-faceted compound eye of an insect, the microlens array is a square panel composed of nearly 90,000 miniature lenses. Each lenslet separates back out the converged light rays received from the main lens before they hit the photosensor and changes the way the light information is digitally recorded.
Just because something has a compound lens does not make it a copy of a fly’s eye, especially considering that half of a fly’s brain is dedicated to sight.
What do you think? Is a microlens array all it takes to emulate fly vision?
