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Optics

Electronic eyeballs

Nature volume 454, pages 703–704 (2008)Cite this article

The ability to fabricate silicon optoelectronic devices on a curved surface will lead to imaging systems with exceptional characteristics. This innovative technology will find diverse applications.

All animals have curved imagers for their eyes. By contrast, artificial vision systems such as digital and video cameras have to rely on flat image-recording surfaces. These artificial imagers are made with silicon microfabrication technologies to produce the necessary network of semiconductor photodetectors, and they can now create pictures with more than ten million pixels. But there remains the big problem of producing bright, distortion-free images with a flat imager. Given the distortion that occurs at the edges of lenses, multiple combinations of different lenses are required for effective imaging. Consequently, lens arrangements are heavy, expensive and produce darker results than they would otherwise do1.

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Figure 1: The electronic eye camera.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Takao Someya is in the Quantum-Phase Electronics Center, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan. someya@ap.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp ,

    Takao Someya

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  1. Takao Someya
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Someya, T. Electronic eyeballs. Nature 454, 703–704 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454703a

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