Stretchcam: Zooming Using Thin, Elastic Optics

TL;DR

Stretchcam introduces a novel thin, elastic lens camera that achieves zooming through minimal mechanical stretching, enabling compact design and adjustable field of view with small actuation.

Contribution

This paper presents the design, characterization, and prototype of a stretchable elastic lens camera capable of zooming with minimal mechanical movement.

Findings

Achieves 1.5x zoom with only 3% lens stretch

Prototype demonstrates practical feasibility of elastic zoom system

Simulation and real-world images validate system capabilities

Abstract

Stretchcam is a thin camera with a lens capable of zooming with small actuations. In our design, an elastic lens array is placed on top of a sparse, rigid array of pixels. This lens array is then stretched using a small mechanical motion in order to change the field of view of the system. We present in this paper the characterization of such a system and simulations which demonstrate the capabilities of stretchcam. We follow this with the presentation of images captured from a prototype device of the proposed design. Our prototype system is able to achieve 1.5 times zoom when the scene is only 300 mm away with only a 3% change of the lens array's original length.