Development of micro wide angle fovea lens

This paper describes development of a biologically-inspired wide-angle fovea lens well-known as a significant part of the bio-mimetic vision sensor. The authors develop a micro wide angle fovea (WAF) lens suitable for a board lens camera with a 1/3 inch imaging chip. The prototype of this Micro WAF lens has a smaller diameter and length, i.e., φ8mm × 15mm, than half of the WAF lens the author produced formerly, i.e., φ16mm × 32mm, while its central field of view (FOV), we call fovea, has much higher resolution, i.e., its projected image is more highly-distorted than the former WAF lens. The central FOV is about 10 percent of the entire FOV inside an incident angle of 2.5 degrees in Micro WAF lens, while it is about 10 percent inside an incident angle of 10 degrees in the former WAF lens. We focus mainly on determining its specification as the 1st step of a lens design procedure and discussing results simulated using a lens design software.

[1]  Giulio Sandini,et al.  An anthropomorphic retina-like structure for scene analysis , 1980 .

[2]  Yasuo Kuniyoshi,et al.  A foveated wide angle lens for active vision , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[3]  Gordon W. Roberts,et al.  A foveated image sensor in standard CMOS technology , 1995, Proceedings of the IEEE 1995 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference.

[4]  Sohta Shimizu Multi-Functional Application of Wide-Angle Foveated Vision Sensor in Mobile Robot Navigation , 2002, J. Robotics Mechatronics.

[5]  Hao Jiang,et al.  Image extraction by wide angle foveated lens for overt-attention , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[6]  S. Shimizu Wide-Angle Foveation for All-Purpose Use , 2008, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[7]  E. L. Schwartz,et al.  Spatial mapping in the primate sensory projection: Analytic structure and relevance to perception , 1977, Biological Cybernetics.

[8]  Giulio Sandini,et al.  A Foveated Retina-Like Sensor Using CCD Technology , 1989, Analog VLSI Implementation of Neural Systems.