Adaptive Compound Eye Imaging Device Based on Electrowetting Liquid Aperture with Adjustable Shape

Artificial compound eye technology has been a research hotspot due to its advantages, including a large field of view (FOV). However, the lack of adjustability limits its applications. Here, an adaptive compound eye (ACE) imaging device based on electrowetting liquid aperture with adjustable shape is proposed to achieve both large FOV and adaptive imaging. A method to adjust the aperture based on the electrowetting effect is proposed, which dispenses with any mechanical moving components, enabling fast adjustment, compact structure, and low power consumption. The liquid aperture can be flexibly adjusted to a roughly circular shape with a variable diameter between 0 and 5.07 mm or a horizontal or vertical elongated shape with a maximum aspect ratio of 9.5. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of achieving both large FOV and adaptive imaging, including light intensity adaptability and transmittable information frequency adaptability. Therefore, the proposed ACE imaging device can operate under different lighting conditions and can be used to distinguish between target and background images. Its distributed control capability also ensures that it can adapt to locally changing imaging scenes. The proposed ACE imaging device is expected to be applied in many fields such as machine vision, detection, and measurement.