Researchers from the University of Washington in the United States developed the technology to test the potential of miniature cameras. Your device weighs around 250 milligrams, about a tenth the weight of a game card, and streams video to a smartphone at a rate of one to five frames per second.
Sitting on a mechanical arm that can rotate 60 degrees, the camera allows the viewer to capture a high-resolution panoramic shot or track a moving object. In addition to recording everything an insect sees, it can be used as “eyes” for small robots.
But its development, which showed how recording devices could shrink to virtually invisible, will raise privacy concerns.
“We have created a low power, low weight wireless camera system that can capture a first-person view of what is happening from a real live insect or create vision for small robots,” lead author Shyam Gollakota said in a statement. .
“Vision is very important for communication and navigation, but it is extremely difficult to do it on such a small scale. As a result, prior to our work, wireless vision was not possible for small robots or insects.”
They used a small ultra-low power black and white camera that can scan a field of view with the help of a mechanical arm, to better mimic how an insect sees its surroundings. The arm moves when the equipment applies a high voltage, causing the material to bend and move the camera to the desired position.
“An advantage of being able to move the camera is that you can get a wide-angle view of what is happening without consuming a large amount of energy,” said co-author Vikram Iyer.
The camera and arm were controlled via Bluetooth from a smartphone, which can be up to 120 meters (394 feet) away. It currently requires batteries, but researchers are looking to create a version that uses other forms of energy.
The team said they hope their device can be used to explore novel or remote environments and serve biological purposes.
But the researchers also raised the possibility of covert surveillance that would be difficult for subjects to detect, and acknowledged privacy concerns.
“As researchers, we firmly believe that it is really important to put things in the public domain so that people are aware of the risks and so that they can begin to find solutions to address them,” Gollakota said.
“There are so many questions you could explore, such as how the beetle responds to the different stimuli it sees in the environment.” Iyer added. “But also, insects can traverse rocky environments, which is really challenging for robots at this scale. Therefore, this system can also help us by allowing us to see or collect samples from difficult-to-navigate spaces.”
Previous attempts to produce innovative cameras have also attempted to mimic insect vision.
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