New Camera Inspired By Insect Eyes 35
sciencehabit writes "An insect's compound eye is an engineering marvel: high resolution, wide field of view, and incredible sensitivity to motion, all in a compact package. Now, a new digital camera provides the best-ever imitation of a bug's vision, using new optical materials and techniques. This technology could someday give patrolling surveillance drones the same exquisite vision as a dragonfly on the hunt."
Re:Since when are compound eyes high resolution? (Score:4, Informative)
What you're describing is a typical apposition eye, where each lens focuses light onto a single photoreceptor. That's actually the simplest form of compound eye, found in arthropods, annelids, and some bivalves, and it may still deliver higher resolution than the number of facets if operated as a phased array. A slightly more complicated version of the same design, the schizochroal compound eye, actually uses multiple photoreceptors per lens with the resulting hundreds or thousands of low-resolution images being (presumably) composited by the brain. (and incidentally - neuron-for-neuron insects have the most complicated brains on the planet, with each neuron making tens to thousands of times as many connections as those in a human brain)
Skilled fliers and prey-catching insects such as dragonflies typically have among the most sophisticated compound eye designs which deliver quite high resolution - if you've ever been used as a hunting perch by dragon/damselflies you can witness this - they'll be comfortably perched and then dart out to grab some tiny flier that was barely visible to your eye, even if your head was considerably closer to it than the dragonfly's perch was.