Borrowing one of nature’s best designs, U.S. scientists have built an eye-shaped camera using standard sensor materials and say it could improve the performance of digital cameras and enhance imaging of the human body. 

“The device might even lead to the development of prosthetic devices including a bionic eye.”

“This is the first time we’ve demonstrated a camera on a curved surface to really make it look like a human eye,” said Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who reported his findings on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Huang, who worked on the project with John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, developed a relatively simple solution to the long-running problem of transferring microelectronic components onto a curved surface without breaking them.

“If you simply bend it, those materials are brittle like a ceramic bowl. They break,” Huang said in a telephone interview.

To solve this, Huang and Rogers developed a mesh-like material made up of tiny squares that hold the photodetectors and electronic components. The squares are connected by tiny wires that give each component the ability to mold to a curved surface. The Department of Homeland Security currently funds the project by Huang and Rogers and is quite impressed with their advancements on the project. One unique feature that the eye-cam has, is the ability to have clear vision when looking down the center of the eye, but just like the human eye, the camera shows a blur effect the further it focuses away from the center. The great adavances of technology will eventually lead to cures for the most complex diseases worldwide. Feel free to comment! 

•  Source.