Abstract

One of the solutions to the world's industrial and economic recovery and survivability is "Flexible Automation," wherein vision is the key to its cost-effective flexibility. Vision gives the robot a measure of environmental intelligence. The majority of present vision systems are patterned after the human eye, but this is not a requirement. It has been shown that the multi-aperture insect eye does not image an object. The physiology of an insect eye is fundementally different than that of the human eve in that it is not binoccular but multioccular in nature. Yet, insects have extremely well developed visual capabilities. In order to study multi-aperture optics and thus indirectly the functioning of the insect eye, an extremely high resolution sensor system resembling in some aspects the insect eye was constructed. The immediate purpose of this system was to investigate robot vision applications. The system provided a wide field of view with the capability of viewing and object over a two pi solid angle. The resolution of the system was adustable according to requirements with a maximum of about 50 microns at a distance of 23 cm.

© 1984 Optical Society of America