A new technique that mimics how spiders use their eyes to sense the distance to their prey or move away from danger, could help develop the next-generation depth-sensing 3D cameras. The ‘spider-eye lens being developed could help new mobile phones, as well as household gadgets and ‘intelligent’ robots that have increasingly begun pervading our homes to ‘see’ in 3D.
The tiny, hairy head of spiders does not have space for structured light projectors to measure distance to objects, yet they are able to see where they are going and what they are seizing quickly and effectively. How spiders achieve this has been the topic of research among scientists for quite a while.
It has been shown that in spiders each of its eyes is a depth-sensing system. Each eye is multi-layered, with transparent retinas seeing the image with different amounts of blur depending on distance. The differing blurs from different eyes and layers are compared in the spider’s small nervous system to produce an accurate distance measurement — using incredibly little in the way of ‘hardware’.
Researchers at Harvard have now created a high-tech lens system that uses a similar approach, producing the ability to sense depth without traditional optical elements. The ‘metalens’ created by an electrical engineering research team detects an incoming image as two similar ones with different amounts of blur, like the spider’s eye does. These images are compared using an algorithm also like the spider’s — at least in that it is very quick and efficient — and the result is a lovely little real-time, whole-image depth calculation.
The process is not only efficient, meaning it can be done with very little computing hardware and power, but it can be extremely compact: the one designed by the Harvard team was only 3 millimeters across. The small size allows the lens to be mounted or embedded not only on self-driving cars and industrial robots but also small gadgets, smart home items and, of course, phones.
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