He looked at biological imaging systems–in particular, the compound eyes of insects–for the design blueprint. The technology, called TOMBO (Thin Observation Module by Bound Optics), is actually a collection of 9 small lenses and software that analyzes the scene by mimicking the process that insects use to recognize the position, shape, and color of objects. The researchers have crammed TOMBO’s hardware into a tiny box the size of a shirt button. And in the age of increasingly smaller and thinner mobile gadgets, such a compound-eye camera could provide powerful image-taking and image-recognizing functions in, for example, a cell phone.

camera the size of a shirt button can extract 3D information from scenes and recognize objects.

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