One Step closer to the Bionic Eye
In a surprise announcement (read as: nobody saw that coming just yet) researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created an elastic image sensor that is mounted on a flexible silicone bubble that can be inflated. The silicone bubble protects the sensor and gives it heliospheric viewing angle. This is a big step forward for bionic eyes but in the shorter term (until they figure out how to wire this to the brain that is) it will revolutionize the way photographic camera lenses will work because stuff recorded with this sensor is always undistorted - something that lenses can only accomplish when there are lots of very very high quality lenses behind each other (read takes away light and makes the lenses extremely expensive). Also this approach would likely help to focus sub- and objects and do so much faster (inflate or deflate air instead of moving some heavy glass forward backward. It will be interesting to see how long this takes to hit the market - I think this will get into cellphones first as there is the biggest market with the biggest need of smaller lighter cheaper.
Original Article at nature.com