A revolutionary new camera can be wrapped around objects to capture images that would otherwise require two or more conventional cameras.
Created by scientists from Columbia University's Computer Vision Laboratory, this novel sheet camera has a flexible lens array that, when bent, can dramatically widen its field of view to capture larger swathes of an image.
"Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space," said Shree K. Nayar, study leader and T.C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia Engineering. "While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging. We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible."
Using traditional fixed focal length lenses in such a lens array would have caused "gaps" between the lenses' fields of view and resulted in a photos with missing pieces. Therefore, the team set out to design a flexible lens array that could adapt its optical properties when deformed.
The researchers created an adaptive lens array made of elastic material that enables the focal length of each lens in the sheet camera to vary with the local curvature of the sheet. In other words, as the deformable light-sensing sheet is bent, the field of view increases.
For their prototype, researchers fabricated a lens array using silicone in a 33 by 33 lens array mold. An aperture sheet made of nylon was then glued to the bottom of the lens array, and a diffuser was attached. A Nikon D90 camera was then placed under the array and used to photograph the 33 by 33 spots it created on the diffuser as it was bent in a vise.
This revolutionary technique avoids the use of complex mechanical or electrical mechanisms to independently control each lens of the array.
While the sheet camera is still in its early stages of development and testing, if manufactured cheaply, like on a roll of plastic or fabric, researchers suggest that it could be wrapped around endless objects to capture wide, seamless images.
"The adaptive lens array we have developed is an important step towards making the concept of flexible sheet cameras viable," Nayar added. "The next step will be to develop large-format detector arrays to go with the deformable lens array. The amalgamation of the two technologies will lay the foundation for a new class of cameras that expand the range of applications that benefit from imaging."
The study will be presented at the International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) in May.
