PRI Research Seminar Series on 8 Jul 2024 (Mon) Seeing Like Dragonflies: Optical-Fiber-based Artificial Compound Eyes

_^Topic

Seeing Like Dragonflies: Optical-Fiber-based Artificial Compound Eyes 

_^Abstract

Natural selection prompts arthropods to evolve a compound eye imaging system that arranges a dense array of ommatidia on a curved surface. Among all arthropods, dragonflies possess the best natural compound eyes (NCEs) in resolving power and information-processing speed. Our research tries to faithfully mimic dragonflies to develop an artificial compound eye (ACE) for 180-degree field of view (FOV), negligible aberration, and ultrafast motion tracking, and will then further develop it into a camera system for 3D vision applications. We expect our ACE system to find broad applications in robot vision, AR/MR, autonomous driving, UAV flight control, etc.

_^Biography

Prof. Xuming Zhang is currently a full professor at the Photonics Research Institute and the Department of Applied Physics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received a BEng degree in Precision Mechanical Engineering from the University of Science & Technology of China (USTC) in 1994, and a Ph.D. from the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in 2006. His research has produced more than 130 journal papers and has been extensively reported by public media. His current research interests cover mainly nanophotonics, microfluidics, artificial photosynthesis, biomimetics and green energy.