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Artificial eye boosted by hemispherical retina

An artificial eye has been reported that incorporates densely packed, nanometre-scale light sensors into a hemispherical retina-like component. Some of its sensory capabilities are comparable to that of its biological counterpart.
  1. Hongrui Jiang

    1. Hongrui Jiang is in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and the McPherson Eye Research Institute, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.

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Science fiction frequently features robots that have artificial eyes, as well as bionic eyes that interface with the human brain to restore the vision of people who are blind. Much effort has been made to develop such devices, but fabricating the spherical shape of a human eye — particularly a hemispherical retina — is an enormous challenge that severely limits the function of artificial and bionic eyes. In a paper in Nature, Gu et al.1 report an innovative, concavely hemispherical retina consisting of an array of nanometre-scale light sensors (photosensors) that mimic the photoreceptor cells in human retinas. The authors use this retina in an electrochemical eye that has several capabilities comparable to those of the human eye, and that performs the basic function of acquiring image patterns.

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Nature 581, 264-265 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01420-7

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