It is known that eyes of the common fly is a compound eye with multiple detectors and multiple lenses. It has always been thought that the 180 degree vision would be very useful and could be very high resolution. Though interesting to think about in terms of camera’s, it has been difficult to create multiple camera’s in that orientation. A team at University Urbana Champaign has created the eye purely out of curiosity and has determined two applications of value : Endoscopes and Surveillance. It is interesting that though the compound eye has been known for quite some time, single camera with wide lenses have been used much more.
It will be good to see how these compound eye camera’s get used.