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Krill-eye : Superposition Compound Eye for Wide-Angle Imaging via GRIN Lenses Shinsaku Hiura∗ Ankit Mohan Ramesh Raskar Camera Culture Group, MIT Media Lab Abstract crabs). However, the amount of incoming light on a photo receptor is limited because the size of the aperture of each We propose a novel wide angle imaging system inspired ommatidium (one optical unit of compound eye) is very by compound eyes of animals. Instead of using a single lens, small [10]. Diffraction effects greatly limit the angular sen- well compensated for aberration, we used a number of sim- sitivity of each ommatidium, thus limiting the overall an- ple lenses to form a compound eye which produces prac- gular resolution. The maximum resolving power of a lens tically distortion-free, uniform images with angular vari- is expressed by Dawes’ limit [1] R ≈ 116/D, where D ation. The images formed by the multiple lenses are su- is the diameter of the lens in millimeters and R is the re- perposed on a single surface for increased light efficiency. We use GRIN (gradient refractive index) lenses to create sharply focused images without the artifacts seen when us- ing reflection based methods for X-ray astronomy. We show the theoretical constraints for forming a blur-free image on the image sensor, and derive a continuum between 1 : 1flat optics for document scanners and curved sensors focused at infinity. Finally, we show a practical application of the proposed optics