Biomimetic hybrid fisheye/compound eye imaging system with wide view and high resolution

Based on the multiscale imaging theory, a biomimetic hybrid fisheye/compound eye imaging system is utilized for wide view and high resolution sensing. The objective is a relatively large-aperture ball lens collecting the wide-angle target light and imaging it onto an intermediate image surface which is spherical and concentric with the ball lens. The intermediate images are then corrected for aberration and imaged onto the detector array by a small-diameter lens group array which work as the eyepiece and are spherically symmetric about the center of the ball lens. A comparison of imaging performance is presented between the system using concentric double ball lenses and the system using single ball lens as the objective, respectively. The latter has even better imaging performance and avoids the problems of tolerancing, mechanical and thermal instability of the cemented ball lenses. The designed full field of view is over 100° while the angular resolution is higher than 10″and the distortion is less than 5% in the full field. The system has a large depth of field. Targets from 300 m away to infinite can be simultaneously imaged without focus adjustment. It can be widely used in the field of surveillance.