Insect-style ‘eyes’ could enable drone swarm formation flying

Replicating the visual capabilities of insects can give machines a wide field of view and advanced motion-tracking capabilities. Integrating compound eye-style systems into autonomous robots and drones has so far been challenging, however, as the systems are often complex, and face stability issues and geometry constraints.

A new system developed by researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) aims to solve those problems. With potential applications including close formation flying for drone swarms, the artificial ‘compound eye’ is reportedly more cost-effective and at least twice as sensitive as existing market products.

Mimicking the visual capabilities of compound eyes, the system could be applied in a wide range of scenarios, including improving drone accuracy and efficiency in tasks such as irrigation or emergency rescue. With its high sensitivity, the system could also enable closer collaboration among robots and other connected devices. In the long term, developers hope it will enhance autonomous driving safety and “accelerate the adoption of intelligent transport systems”. 

Professor Fan Zhiyong’s team developed a pinhole compound vision system by adopting new materials and structures. This system features a hemispherical perovskite nanowire array imager, with high pixel density to enlarge the imaging field, and a 3D-printed lens-free pinhole array with a customisable layout to regulate incident light and eliminate the blind area between neighbouring ommatidia (individual units within an insect’s compound eye).

Good angular selectivity, a wide field of view, and a wide spectrum response in monocular and binocular configurations mean the pinhole compound eye can accurately locate and track targets, the team said.

“This compound eye design is simple, light and cheap. Although it won’t fully replace traditional cameras, it could be a huge boost in certain robotics applications, such as in a swarm of drones flying in close formation,” said Professor Fan.

“By further miniaturising the device size and increasing the number of ommatidia, imaging resolution, and response speed, this type of device can find broad applications in optoelectronics and robotics.”

The work was published in Science Robotics.

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