Ever think of a car whose body is made of sheet of cameras , that wrap around car to give the autonomous driving flawlessly. In Columbia university Nayar is working on the sheet of lenses that can be bended and is totally flexible thus having bendable digital camera lenses with increase in field of view by bending.

The making of bendable digital camera lenses

Let us take a look briefly that how that marvelous looking future bendable digital camera lenses sheets are achieved. The researchers molded the flexible lens array of very low resolution , containing 33 x 33 lenses in a silicon rubber. On top of it they layered a plastic sheet that is flexible and have holes in it. Also placed a diffusing sheet and held all these sheets in a vise looking frame so that it can be bend when computer monitor projected the images from above.

Bending the digital camera lens array at various angles , the images formed on diffusing sheet are captured by digital camera that is set below the whole setup.

Usage

This prototype flexible lens array finally made it possible to add the camera to all kind of surfaces . It can be wraped on the street light pole on the street to provide surveillance video in 360. It can also be used in car to provide visuals of outside world from the completely new angle or can further assist the autonomous driving applications.

Future Insights

However no matter how exciting is the current advancement is , still for the use of working camera the lens array would need a flexible high density , high pixel count photo sensor , which is currently not available.

read more at Columbia university’s “Flexible Sheet camera with elastic optics“.