Ultra-thin camera delivers 140-degree view with no lens protrusion

A breakthrough technology has emerged to fundamentally solve the camera protrusion/thickness issue, which has been a persistent limitation as smart devices become thinner. A KAIST research team has developed an ultra-thin camera that achieves a wide 140-degree field of view (FOV) without any lens protrusion. This technology is expected to be applied across various fields, including medical endoscopes, wearable devices, and micro-robots.

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

The joint research team led by Professor Ki-Hun Jeong from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering and Professor Min H. Kim from the School of Computing has developed a wide-angle biomimetic camera. Inspired by insect vision, the camera is exceptionally thin yet boasts a vast field of view.

The team successfully secured a diagonal FOV of 140 degrees—surpassing human peripheral vision—within an ultra-thin structure of less than 1 mm, roughly the thickness of a coin.

High-performance wide-angle cameras typically require multiple stacked lenses, inevitably leading to increased thickness. To overcome this, the research team focused on the visual structure of the parasitic insect Xenos peckii.

While typical insect compound eyes offer a wide FOV, they suffer from low resolution. Conversely, single-lens cameras provide high resolution but limited FOV. Xenos peckii, however, possesses a unique visual system where multiple eyes capture partial segments of a scene, which the brain then integrates into a single high-resolution image.

By introducing this split-capture and integration principle into the camera architecture, the team simultaneously achieved both thinness and high image quality. This overcomes the low-resolution issues of conventional compound eye cameras and the narrow FOV limits of single-lens systems.

The team implemented a method where several micro-lenses with an ellipsoidal shape capture different directions simultaneously, merging them into one sharp image without optical aberration.

Notably, by precisely adjusting the lens shape and light entry points, they prevented blurring at the edges of the frame. As a result, uniform clarity is maintained from the center to the periphery, enabling stable imaging even at very close ranges.

With a thickness of only 0.94 mm, this ultra-thin camera is expected to bring innovation to space-constrained fields. It can significantly enhance image acquisition efficiency for medical endoscopes requiring precise observation of narrow areas, as well as for micro-robots and wearable health care equipment.

This technology shifts the design paradigm from increasing device size for better performance to enabling high-performance imaging in ultra-small form factors.

Furthermore, the research team has completed a technology transfer to MicroPix Co., Ltd., a specialist in optical imaging, with the goal of full-scale commercialization by next year.

"Conventional wide-angle cameras faced a trade-off where reducing size lowered resolution, and increasing resolution enlarged the device," explained Professor Ki-Hun Jeong.

"By applying visual principles from nature, we have secured both a wide FOV and stable image quality in an ultra-compact structure. This is a new image acquisition method usable even in extreme space-constrained environments."

Provided by The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)