'Origami lens' makes high resolution cameras 8 times thinner

Tweet From physorg.com, engineers at UC San Diego have built a powerful yet ultrathin digital camera by folding up the telephoto lens. This technology may yield lightweight, ultrathin, high resolution miniature cameras for unmanned surveillance aircraft, cell phones and infrared night vision applications.


Above: cross section of an eightfold imager. Below: cut-out view of the same imager. The blue lines illlustrate the path the light follows as it moves from aperture to light sensor. Credit: UC San Diego

In the laboratory, the engineers compared a 5 millimeter thick, 8-fold imager optimized to focus on objects 2.5 meters away with a conventional high-resolution, compact camera lens with a 38 millimeter focal length.