Optical System Design of Bionic Compound Eye with Broad Field of View

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel miniature bionic compound eye system with a large field of view, high imaging quality, and potential applications in military and mechanical vision, achieved through innovative micro-lens array and relay system design.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new design for a miniature compound eye with a curved micro-lens array and relay system, enhancing field of view and image quality compared to existing designs.

Findings

MTF values > 0.3 at 89.3lp/mm within 120.5° FOV

RMS spot radii smaller than Airy disk radius, indicating good image quality

Design maintains performance after tolerance analysis

Abstract

In nature, many common insects have compound eyes composed of many small eyes arranged on a curved retina. This kind of vision systems have many advantages, such as small size, large FOV (field of view) and high sensitivity, which have attracted extensive attention and research from world-wide researchers. It has good application prospects in military strikes and mechanical vision. In this paper, a new type of miniature compound eye system with large FOV is designed, which contains a micro-lens array and a relay system. Hexagonal micro-lens array are spliced seamlessly as a curved shell in the designed compound eye system. The intermediate curved image formed by the curved array is converted to a planar image by introducing a relay system. After combination and optimization of the micro-lens array and the relay system, the MTF values at 89.3lp/mm for each FOV within 120.5{\deg} are greater than 0.3, and the corresponding RMS spot radii less than the radius of the Airy disk, which proves the good imaging quality for the compound eye. The clear aperture of a single micro lens is 250{\mu}m with FOV 6{\deg}. After tolerance analysis, the results show the image quality still holds good enough performance and meets the requirements of the additive manufacturing process.