An insect-scale artificial visual-olfactory bionic compound eye

TL;DR

Researchers created a tiny insect-scale compound eye that can see and smell, useful for robot navigation and monitoring.

Contribution

A bionic compound eye with integrated visual and olfactory sensing at insect-scale is demonstrated.

Findings

The compound eye has 1027 ommatidia on a 1.5×1.5 mm² surface and provides a wide field-of-view.

It enables high sensitivity to moving objects and rapid response to environmental gases.

The system can be used for obstacle avoidance and monitoring moving targets.

Abstract

Compound eyes feature unique optical structures and high-efficiency image processing. The opto-olfactory nervous system of Drosophila has the characteristics of lightweight and low power consumption. Significant efforts have been dedicated to the design and manufacturing of artificial compound eye system. However, it is still challenging to construct a bionic visual-olfactory compound eye microsystem with sensitive photoelectric response and accurate olfactory perception in insect-scale, mimicking the biological multimodal fusion decision-making mechanism. Here, we report a miniature apposition compound eye that integrates 1027 ommatidia on 1.5×1.5 mm2 by manufacturing a bionic micro-lens array onto flexible photodetectors via femtosecond laser two-photon polymerization, further construct the colorimetric olfactory sensor array through inkjet printing to achieve integrated perception of vision and smell. The bionic compound eye (bio-CE) enables wide field-of-view imaging (azimuth angle 180°), natural interocular isolation, a 1 kHz flicker fusion frequency and color response to various hazardous chemicals, resulting in high sensitivity to moving objects and rapid response to environmental gases. The microsystem can serve as a wide-angle close-range obstacle avoidance detector and a device for monitoring visual and olfactory information of moving targets. The insect-scale bionic apposition compound eye shows great potential applications in unmanned platform navigation and bionic robot intelligence.

The authors demonstrate a miniature apposition compound eye, integrating 1027 ommatidia in a 1.5 mm^2 surface area, for integrated perception of vision and smell. The platform serves as a wide-angle, close-range obstacle avoidance detector and visual and olfactory monitoring device.

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