Design and Fabrication of Soft Zoom Lens Applied in Robot Vision

The design theorem of traditional zoom lens uses mechanical motion to precisely adjust the separations between individual or groups of lenses; therefore, it is more complicated and requires multiple optical elements. Conventionally, the types of zoom lens can be divided into optical zoom and digital zoom. With the demands of the opto-mechanical elements, the zoom ability of lens system was dominated by the optical and mechanical design technique. In recent years, zoom lens is applied in compact imaging devices, which are popularly used in Notebook, PDA, mobile phone, and etc. The minimization of the zoom lens with excellent zoom ability and high imaging quality at the same time becomes a key subject of related efficient zoom lens design. In this decade, some novel technologies for zoom lens have been presented and they can simply be classified into the following three types: