Millions of years ago the oceans were filled with trilobites. Like insects, the now extinct horseshoe-crab-like creatures possessed compound eyes – eyes composed of thousands of individual lenses.
Researchers discovered that one species of trilobite, Dalmanitina socialis, had a particularly special set of compound eyes containing two sets of lenses that bent light at different angles, thus acting like bifocals.
The scientists think that this eye design helped the creature see both near and far at the same time.
Scientists from the US National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) and from several labs in China and have now used the trilobite’s unique eyes to help them develop a new light-field miniature camera with record-breaking depth of field.
Light-field cameras work by capturing field of light rays within a scene. Using artificial intelligence the researchers experimented with metasurfaces – surfaces covered with forests of microscopic pillars – to manipulate light. Through this process, they were able to focus on near objects and far off objects at the same time.
“There is no equivalent bulk optical component that can do this function—that is, focus light close and far at the same time,” says study co-author Amit Agrawal, an electrical engineer at NIST. “This is only enabled by our ability to engineer light-matter interactions at nanometer-length scales.”
According to Agrawal the miniature cameras could one day find their way in to consumer cameras.
“I think some more work needs to be done where the processors in our cellphone or smart glasses can do this,” Agrawal told IEEE. “But from an optics perspective, I think there are no fundamental obstacles.”
The scientist’s study was published online in Nature Communications.