Abstract

Nature, when looking for an 'optimal' imaging system, could not find a single, good for everything, solution. Both single aperture (like the human eye) and multiple aperture (like the eyes of insects) systems are widely used by nature. Originally, the compound eye of insects was thought to be an array of collimators, each being composed of one lenslet and one detector/nerve-ending. As each "collimator" points at slightly different direction, the complete array samples the visual field and forms its image. More recently it was found that, at least for some insects, there is more than one detector per lenslet. This multiple detector/lenslet structure with its nerve network is now believed to provide some image pre-processing at the sensor level of some insects visual system [1]. Man made devices that provide very compact structure with relatively large image were demonstrated [2], [3]. The real potential of multiple aperture optical systems, however, is in providing optical pre-processing, relieving the electronic processor of image processing systems from the computation-intensive part of its work.

© 1985 Optical Society of America