About 2,400 years ago Plato, the Greek philosopher, formulated his belief that our eyes work by emitting beams of light. While certainly an innovative thought, it doesn’t exactly speak to the early obsessions with the study of optical phenomena that brought us to where we are today: artificial vision system inspired by biology.
Our hardware vision delivery powers a wide range of applications in self-driving cars, object detection and crop monitoring, but, unlike animals, synthetic vision systems cannot simply grow in its natural habitat. Therefore, animation systems that can navigate both on land and in water are yet to power our machines – leading scientists from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory created by MIT (CSAIL), Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and Seoul National University in South Korea, to develop a new artificial vision system that can closely reproduce species vision. The crab is capable of handling both terrains. The semi-terrestrial species – affectionately known as the crab because it appears to be beckoning with its giant claws – has the ability to photograph amphibians and an extremely wide field of view, for all current systems are limited to the hemispherical shape.
The artificial eye, like a spherical ball, is largely surfaceless, small, black, making sense of its inputs through a mixture of materials that process and understand light. shining. The scientists combined a series of planar microlenses with classified refractive index configurations and a flexible array of photodiodes with comb patterns encased on a 3-D spherical structure. This configuration means that light rays from multiple sources will always focus at the same point on the image sensor, regardless of the refractive index of its surroundings.
Both panoramic and amphibious imaging capabilities have been tested in aerial and underwater experiments by photographing five objects with different distances and orientations, and the system provides consistent image quality. and a nearly 360° field of view in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. Meaning: it can be seen both underwater and on land, where previous systems were limited to a single domain.
“Our system can be used in the development of unique applications, such as panoramic motion detection and obstacle avoidance in constantly changing environments, as well as virtual and augmented reality. . Currently, the size of the semiconductor optical unit, commonly used in smartphones, automobiles, and surveillance/monitoring cameras, is limited at the laboratory level,” said Young Min Song, professor of engineering Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at GIST. “However, with the technology of image sensor manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix, the technology limit is surmountable to develop a much smaller camera with better imaging performance than conventional cameras. Cameras are being manufactured at present. We expect that the semiconductor technology level of the domestic system will be enhanced through the production of this new conceptual image sensor.”
Feeling bad
There are many things that catch the eye when it comes to crabs. Behind their giant claws, exists a unique visual system that is powerful due to life both in water and on land. Their flat corneas, combined with a hierarchical refractive index, resist the blurring effects that arise from changes in the external environment – an overwhelming limitation for other types of compound eyes. The tiny creatures also have a 3-D omnidirectional field of view, ranging from elliptical structures and stalked eyes. They have evolved to look at almost everything at once to avoid attacks on open tidal flats, and to communicate and interact with mates.
Biomimetic cameras are not new – in 2013 a wide-angle (FoV) camera that simulates the compound eyes of an insect was reported in the journal Nature, and in 2020 a wide-angle FoV that mimics the eye fish appeared. While these cameras can capture large areas at once, structurally it is difficult to go beyond 180 degrees and recently commercial products with 360-degree FoV have been born. However, these can be quite troublesome as they have to combine images taken from two or more cameras and to magnify the field of view you need an optical system with a complex configuration, which causes distortion. image form. It’s also a challenge to maintain focus when the surroundings change, such as in the air and underwater – hence the impetus to look at the calling crab.
The crab proved to be a worthy muse. Five lovely objects (dolphins, planes, submarines, fish and ships), at different distances are projected into the artificial vision system from different angles. The team performed multi-map point visualization experiments and simulated-matched artificial images. They dunked half the device in water in a container to go deep.
A logical extension of the work includes a review of biologically inspired light adaptation schemes in search of higher resolution and superior image processing techniques.
Written by Rachel Gordon
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
