Communications of the ACM
A Flexible Camera: A Radically Different Approach to Imaging
A team of Columbia University researchers has developed a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras.
Credit: Computer Vision Laboratory
Columbia University researchers have developed a sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras.
They designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. The system enables the sheet camera to produce high-quality images over a wide range of sheet deformations.
"We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," says Columbia professor Shree K. Nayar. He notes if such an imaging system could be mass produced, it could be wrapped around a wide range of objects, and lead to cameras the size of a credit card that a photographer could flex to control its field of view.
The new "flex-cam" requires a flexible detector array and a thin optical system that can project a high-quality image on the array. However, bending the camera would result in gaps between the fields of view and adjacent lenses. To solve this problem, the researchers developed an adaptive lens array made of elastic material that enables the focal length of each lens in the sheet camera to vary with the local curvature of the sheet in a way that mitigates aliasing in the captured images.
From Columbia University
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