PhotoniX (Jun 2024)

A planar compound eye based microsystem for high precision 3D perception

  • Li Zhang,
  • Haiyang Zhan,
  • Xinyuan Liu,
  • Hongjing Cao,
  • Fei Xing,
  • Zheng You

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-024-00136-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

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Abstract Three-dimensional (3D) panoramic vision system plays a fundamental role in the biological perception of external information, and naturally becomes a key system for embodied intelligence to interact with the outside world. A binocular vision system with rotating eyeball has long baseline, large volume and weak sensitivity to motion. A compound eye system has small volume, high sensitivity to motion but poor precision. Here, a planar compound eye microsystem for high precision 3D perception is proposed by combining semiconductor manufacturing process and biological compound eye structure. Using a semiconductor planar image sensor as the sensing unit, a space-coded planar sub-eye array is designed and its sub field of view (FOV) is dynamically mapped to the image sensor. It solves the problem that a traditional vision system cannot simultaneously accommodate wide FOV with long focal length and high sensitivity to motion with high resolution. The parallax among different sub-eyes enables the system to accurately perceive and dynamically track the 3D position of the target in the range of 10 m and within the FOV of 120 ° in a single compound eye. This system is of great significance in the fields of intelligent robot and intelligent perception.

Keywords