Sure, you already follow him on Instagram and listen to his podcast. But now you can watch live, streaming video thanks to a camera invented by Vikram Iyer, a doctoral student at the University of Washington.
It's a remarkable technical achievement. Not only is the image sensor tiny, but it's mounted on a swinging arm that matches the direction of the insect's head, thus presenting a more realistic depiction of a bug's view of the world.
To save on battery life, the camera only turns on when an accelerometer is triggered and thus remains dormant when the beetle doesn't move. As a result, the camera can capture video for up to six hours.
How is this useful? Iyer described his invention as more useful for robotics than entomology. King 5 News quotes him:
“If you need to build a robot that can fit into small spaces, you need a way to navigate around that environment,” said Iyer. “And vision is one of the major ways people solve these problems.”
At the core, he said it’s essentially a tiny computing platform ready to be modified for different uses.
-via Dave Barry | Image: Science magazine