Digital Camera Based on a Bug's Eye

Alex

If one lens is good, then hundreds have got to be better! A team of researchers have created the world's first digital camera that mimic the compound eyes of bugs:

Taking cues from Mother Nature, the cameras exploit large arrays of tiny focusing lenses and miniaturized detectors in hemispherical layouts, just like eyes found in arthropods. The devices combine soft, rubbery optics with high performance silicon electronics and detectors, using ideas first established in research on skin and brain monitoring systems by John A. Rogers, a Swanlund Chair Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his collaborators.

“Full 180 degree fields of view with zero aberrations can only be accomplished with image sensors that adopt hemispherical layouts – much different than the planar CCD chips found in commercial cameras,” Rogers explained. “When implemented with large arrays of microlenses, each of which couples to an individual photodiode, this type of hemispherical design provides unmatched field of view and other powerful capabilities in imaging. Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution.”

Link - via The Verge


Comments (0)

Not a sock darner with that handle; I remember my Grandmother using one. More likely some type of early machine like a butter churn or primative Veg-O-Matic.
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19th Century bowling pin. Victorian-era bowling alleys did not have automatic pin setters. The pins were picked up and repositioned by under-fed orphaned waifs . The handles atop the pins helped the tiny orphans reset the pins quickly so they could scurry out the path of on-coming bowling balls.
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an early submarine model with periscope. They knew bottles floated, so decided to put a periscope in it, but turns out bottles don't like to stay upright. really sucked for the test pilot.
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It looks like a tiny lamp- but it's a lamp used in the home of a blind person. That way, things look right to sighted people, but the blind person doesn't accidentally burn themselves on a real lamp.
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Dr. Amazing's Wrinkle Remover! Combined with our tonic water, this amazing product will remove any and all signs of aging. Two doses daily, immediately followed by rubbing our patented remover across all wrinkled skin surfaces will leave you looking, and feeling, young again! It's like an iron for your skin! But don't worry, it won't burn! *insert cheesy grin*
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Looks to me like a pin from an old bowling game I have seen where the pins aren't knocked down, but rather attached to a pivot point above them. When the pin is hit, it retracts into the ceiling and is released back down (reset) for the next turn.
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That's used at fish farms, the first person uses it to make holes in the water, then the second person plants one fish egg in each hole. Someone else comes behind the egg-planters with a hose to fill in the holes. It's a very efficient system.
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It's an old-fashioned stand mixer (hey, didn't I guess that already?). I presume that you pour what needs to be mixed through the hole near the top, and after pumping/turning the handle, you pour out mixture through the same hole.
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the original penis pump.

It required 2 people to operate. The man had the option of having his partner help, which proved to be somewhat of a mood killer. Or, he could have a friend help though when caught, it caused many an awkward situation. Hence many men desperate enough to use one, had a family member help... this reduced the rumors that would go around, but also made the family dinner very uncomfortable.

Shortly afterwards it was redesigned in it's current, "help yourself" format.
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Ok a lot of you went the bowling pin route. You almost had it, EXCEPT that it is for strengthening your hand and arm for a bowling BALL. That is why the handle is so wide. It keeps your fingers at the proper distance during training.
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That's easy. This is a tool used to shape woolen hats. The hatter would place the hat on the pin, and push this into a liquid mercury bath, purging out the moisture from the wool. By the shape of this one, I would think it was used to make a womans' hat, a 1930's style cloche. (The expression "Mad as a hatter" comes from the damage done by exposure to the fumes of mercury. )
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I think it might be an Udder Massager for bovines. How does one get the best milk? Massage it out! Happy cows, better milk! The handle looks like it might have a cow bell on it.
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I'm thinking this tool is used when placing large stickers or other adhesive materials on a flat surface. The rounded, wooden edge is used to smooth out any air holes and allow for a smooth, flawless finish.
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This is a comblestobber, possibly the oddest musical and most dangerous instrument ever devised. When electricity was new it was put to many uses and making 'electric' music was a brief and often fatal fad. The 'combler', while suspended within a rolling ball like metal cage, which would by 'rolled' along a charged grid, would acheive various senthized notes by swinging the charged comblestobber in small curving arcs, without touching, but almost making contact with the cage. Surviving audience members described the experience and 'electrifying.'
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