Northwestern University's curvilinear 'eyeball camera' is squishy, just like yours

We've seen gooey lenses before, the Varioptic variety already having found a home in an honest to gosh retail product. But, this is a little different. It's called the "eyeball camera," a curvilinear lens and sensor system developed by a team at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It uses a similar sort of flexible design, this one actuated by varying the pressure of fluids in the device -- higher pressure for convex, lower pressure for concave. Interestingly here the camera sensor itself flexes right along with the lens, and while the maximum zoom is currently a measly 3.5x, higher power is said to be possible -- eventually. No word was given on when we might see these coming to market, so don't pull a Batou and get rid of your fleshy ones just yet.

Northwestern University's curvilinear 'eyeball camera' is squishy, just like yours originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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