Artificial Eye: Researchers combine Metalens with an Artificial Muscle

Inspired by the human eye, researchers at the Harvard have developed an adaptive metalens, that is essentially a flat, electronically controlled artificial eye. The adaptive metalens simultaneously controls for three of the major contributors to blurry images: focus, astigmatism, and image shift.

This research combines breakthroughs in artificial muscle technology with metalens technology to create a tunable metalens that can change its focus in real time, just like the human eye.

And, the researchers build the capability of dynamically correcting for aberrations such as astigmatism and image shift, which the human eye cannot naturally do.

This demonstrates the feasibility of embedded optical zoom and autofocus for a wide range of applications including cell phone cameras, eyeglasses and virtual and augmented reality hardware.

Image courtesy of the Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS

**************************************************
**************************************************