Looking to the Future

Remember the red, glowing bionic eyes of the cyborgs in the Terminator flicks? In that film series, the robots’ eyes worked much like the human variety, converting light waves into clear, three-dimensional images of the outside world. Despite the considerable progress that has been made in the field of bionic vision, artificial eyes with human-like visual acuity are still a matter of science fiction. Developing bionic eyes with such capabilities has been complicated by, among other things, the image distortion resulting from light passing through a curved lens. In human and other mammalian eyes, this distortion is minimal because the surface of the retina is also curved. By contrast, most cameras focus images from a curved lens onto a flat surface. Camera manufacturers typically counter the resulting distortion by using a series of additional lenses.

In an article published in Nature, researchers at the University of Illinois (Urbana, IL, USA) and Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, USA) announced they have developed an eye-shaped camera that can produce a non-distorted image with a single lens. They were able to accomplish this by creating a curved, electronic light-detecting surface to mimic the contour of the retina. In the past, developing such a surface had proven difficult because of the tendency of microelectronic components to fracture upon bending. The researchers solved that problem by using a flexible mesh of silicon light detectors.

The camera’s picture is currently limited to 256 pixels, but that number can be easily scaled up, according to John Rogers, a professor of material science at University of Illinois, who played an integral role in developing the camera. In addition to bionic implants, potential applications of the design include robotic sensory skins and biomedical monitoring devices.

Tags: Research, Technology