Advanced artificial compound-eye imaging systems

摘要

Based on previously developed ultra-thin compound eye sensors we propose three new setups for compensating apparent draw-backs of artificial apposition compound eyes. In detail, either color vision, increased sensitivity or a system with decreased sensor format is demonstrated by integrating multiple light sensitive pixels within the footprint of each microlens of this multi-channel configuration. The optical setup is designed that way that either parallel imaging of each individual object point or a constant sampling of the FOV is achieved with a group of pixels in each channel. To read out the overall image, different pixels have to be superimposed or stitched digitally. The amount of information which is gathered in each channel is increased whereas no resolution is lost compared to a standard artificial apposition compound eye. The optical design, fabrication and also the experimental verification for the system of superposition type is discussed in detail.