The eyes of insects have long inspired camera research, but a group of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Engineering (KAIST) have used inspiration from the eyes of a parasite to create an ultra-wide lens that’s thinner than a penny.
Ultra-wide lenses are often rather large, which creates a challenge in applications like smartphone cameras and healthcare devices. Researchers from KAIST have built a “spatially offset ellipsoidal microlens array camera,” or a small camera that uses an array of tiny lenses to capture a 140-degree field of view.
