Ultra-thin Camera – Compound Eye Vision Approach

Abstract

In this paper we issue the camera form factor and look into the optical limitations of the conventional camera system. Our research objective is to develop a planar (very thin) form factor camera. We proposed a multi-aperture optics, which is inspired by the compound eyes of insects, and a light field mixture model that describes how the light field information is captured and mixed by a geometric relation between the sensor and the lens. We verified the feasibility of the proposed idea at the thin camera design with a total track length less than 1 mm.