A hemispherical omni-directional bio inspired optical sensor

Flying insects possess a surprisingly competent vision and navigation system, which enables them to control various manoeuvres in their flight. In this paper, we have developed a hemispherical omni-directional optical sensor inspired by the compound eye of flying insects. Here, we show the feasibility of a system based on a low complexity optoelectronic system that estimates the optic flow, essentially based on biological findings on the fly Elementary Motion Detectors (EMDs). The valuable properties of our hemispherical compound eye include being lightweight, low power consumption, panoramic field of view and multi resolution. The developed modular system with 128 photoreceptors (up-gradable to 256), with a payload of some hundred grams and power consumption less than 300 mW is light enough to make it suitable to be mounted on UAVs, MAVs and mobile robot applications.