A pair of UCLA bioengineers and a former postdoctoral scholar have developed a new class of 3D camera systems that can mimic flies' multiview vision and bats' natural sense of smell, resulting in multidimensional images with extraordinary depth range that can be scanned through blind spots.
The camera can see the size and shape of objects hidden around corners. The technology could be used in medical tools and vehicles that are far more advanced than what is currently available. The research has been published in a journal.
Bats can see a bright picture of their surroundings by using echolocation. They bounce off their surroundings and are picked up by their ears.
It's possible to see the same thing from multiple lines of sight because insects have geometric-shaped compound eyes. Even though their eyes have a fixed focus, flies' compound eyes give them a close-up view even though they can't see anything far away.
The UCLA-led team set out to design a high- performance 3D camera system with advanced capabilities that leverage these advantages, but also address nature's weaknesses.
The idea itself has been tried, but seeing across a range of distances and around occlusions has been a major hurdle. For the first time, a wide and deep panoramic view can be obtained with simple optics and a small array of sensors.
The framework allows the camera system to see with an extended depth range. Experiments show that the system can see hidden objects that are not seen by 3D cameras.
A laser scans the surroundings to create a 3D map of the area.
Our human eyes would miss hidden objects in a high resolution snapshot of the scene.
The array takes a lower-resolution image of the scene, processes what individual cameras see, then reconstructs the scene in high-resolution 3D imagery. The camera system was shown to be able to image a scene with several objects.
"If you're covering one eye and looking at your laptop computer, and there's a coffee mug just slightly hidden behind it, you might not see it, because the laptop blocks the view." If you use both eyes, you'll be able to see the object better. Imagine seeing a mug with an insect's eye. Multiple views of it can now be had.
The camera array is able to make sense of what's hidden in a similar way. One can sense a hidden object by how long it takes for light to bounce back to the camera.
The co-lead authors of the published research are a graduate student from UCLA and a researcher from UCLA.
More information: Xiaohua Feng et al, Compact light field photography towards versatile three-dimensional vision, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31087-9 Journal information: Nature Communications
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