EUROPEAN COMMISSION
PRESS RELEASE
Brussels, 14 August 2013
Digital Agenda:
Swiss, French & German scientists
develop miniature artificial insect eyes which could help
prevent accidents
Scientists in Switzerland, Germany, and France explored how the insect eye
works and designed and built the first fully-functional miniature curved artificial
compound eyes. The "CURVACE" project received €2 million in EU funding to
develop the miniature "insect" eyes, which have high industrial potential in
mobile robotics, smart clothing and medical applications.
In the future, the artificial compound eye could be used in areas where panoramic motion
detection is primordial. For instance, a flexible artificial compound eye could be attached
around automobiles for efficient obstacle detection (e.g. during parking manoeuvres, for
automated vehicle guidance, or for the detection of vehicles or pedestrians that are
getting too close), or implemented in Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) for vision-based collisionfree navigation (e.g. during landing or for obstacle avoidance, such as in rescue
operations). Due to their inherent low thickness and flexibility, they could also be
integrated in tissues to make smart clothes, such as smart hats with collision-alert
systems for visually impaired people. Moreover, flexible artificial compound eyes could be
attached to the walls and furniture of intelligent homes for motion detection (e.g. for the
elderly in ambient assisted living scenarios, or for children in an accident prevention role).
European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes said: “Nature provides us with many
extremely sophisticated solutions when it comes to solving problems. The research
programmes financed by the EC give us the possibility to get inspired, understand, copy
and recreate on an industrial scale some of the great things Mother Nature has brought
us, so we can improve the lives of our fellow citizens.”
The compound eye features characteristics and functionality similar to the eye of the
Drosophila fruit fly, and other arthropods. The eye, a small (12.8 mm diameter, 1.75
grams) cylindrical object is made up of 630 "basic eyes", called ommatidia, arranged in 42
columns of 15 sensors each. Each ommatidium is composed of a lens (172 microns),
combined with an electronic pixel (30 microns). These sensors have advanced optical
properties, such as an undistorted panoramic field of view of 180°x60° and a large depth
of field, and can to adapt to a wide variety of lighting conditions.
CURVACE project was funded through the European Commission's FET open programme.
Part of the “Excellent Science” part of Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for
Research and Innovation, FET open is fostering novel ideas: collaborative research for
embryonic, high risk visionary science and technology.
IP/13/779
Background
The project involves 5 collaborating institutions: EPFL (Switzerland), University of AixMarseille and CNRS (France), Frauenhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision
Engineering (Germany), and the University of Tübingen (Germany) working together for
45 months (01.10.2009 - 30.06.2013). The budget of the entire project is 2.73 million
euro, with 2.09 million coming from EU financing.
The results were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
of the USA (PNAS).
Useful links
http://www.curvace.org/
http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/237940
Hashtags: @fet_eu #FP7 #FET
Have your say
Digital Agenda
Neelie Kroes
Follow Neelie on Twitter
Contacts :
Email: comm-kroes@ec.europa.eu
Tel: +32.229.56361 Twitter: @RyanHeathEU
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