Electronic Eyeball Uses Curved Image Sensor

AnonymousCoward writes "US researchers have made a digital imaging system designed like the human eyeball — its image sensor is on the inside of a hemisphere like your retina. Resolution is so far low, but finding a way to use silicon sensors this way offers a way around the unavoidable distortion that results from projecting a wide angle view onto a flat sensor."

Comments

Domed lenses

[Buzz_Litebeer]

I could have sworn years ago that there were people making headway in having cameras that were domed cameras that, with software, would allow people to pan and view within half of a sphere of view.

Whatever happened to these things?

Why are we not able to produce these now? Why not simply have a spinning CCD?

I could never understand why we would not have something like this at a grocer then later simply use software to pan and zoom and see everything.

Could call it a panopticon camera.

Re:Domed lenses

[Buzz_Litebeer]

haha yes.

It just does not seem to me that with high megapixel high refresh rate cameras out there, that we cannot do something as simple as spin the camera around and take pictures every 1/XX of a second and then with software manipulate it.

or hell, wrap some CCD's into the system and get all angles at once and use the software that way etc...

I have also seen stuff by universities where they have the ability to take pictures at multiple depth and I know we probably have high speed digital cameras to couple these too.

So couple them, multi depth spinny camera that takes pictures at certain secotors once every 1/30th of a second and save them, and then use software to sort out the image afterward.

Call it the Panopticam as you say.

Could mount the things on your car, say on the inside. and if a crash occurs you could have complete 360 degree view of the accident, no need to have the camera pointing in a certain direction.

would be great for forensics, traffic lights etc...