A technology that fundamentally solves the "camera thickness problem" — long cited as a limitation as smart devices grow thinner — has emerged. Researchers at KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, have developed an ultra-thin camera that delivers a wide 140-degree field of view without any lens protrusion.
KAIST announced on Monday that a joint research team led by Professor Jeong Ki-hoon of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering and Professor Kim Min-hyuk of the School of Computing developed a "wide-field-of-view biomimetic camera" that is extremely thin yet boasts a broad viewing angle by applying insect vision principles.
The team achieved a diagonal field of view of 140 degrees — exceeding that of human vision — in an ultra-thin structure measuring less than 1mm, close to the thickness of a human hair.
High-performance wide-angle cameras typically require stacking multiple lenses, which inevitably increases thickness. To overcome this limitation, the research team turned to the visual structure of Xenos peckii, a parasitic insect.
Conventional insect compound eyes can see broadly but suffer from low resolution. Single-lens cameras offer high resolution but have a limited field of view.
Xenos peckii, by contrast, has a unique mechanism: its multiple eyes divide a scene into partial images and then combine them in the brain to produce a high-resolution picture.
The research team adopted this "divide-and-integrate" principle in their camera design, capturing both thinness and high image quality simultaneously. This overcomes the low-resolution problem of compound-eye-based cameras and the narrow field-of-view limitation of single-lens cameras at the same time.
The team implemented a system in which multiple small lenses simultaneously capture different directions, then merge the images into a single sharp picture. In particular, the team precisely calibrated the lens shapes and light entry positions to prevent blurring at the edges of the frame.
As a result, the camera produces uniformly sharp images from the center to the periphery and enables stable imaging even at very close distances.
With a thickness of just 0.94mm, the ultra-thin camera is expected to bring innovation to various fields where space constraints are significant. It can greatly improve imaging efficiency not only for medical endoscopes that require precise observation of narrow areas but also for micro-robots and wearable healthcare devices.
The technology changes the conventional design paradigm that required larger devices for better camera performance, enabling high-quality imaging even in ultra-compact devices.
The research team has already completed a technology transfer to Micropics, a company specializing in optical imaging, and is targeting full-scale commercialization next year.
The camera is expected to be applied across a wide range of fields, from medical endoscopes and wearable devices to ultra-compact robots.
"Conventional wide-angle cameras had a limitation: reducing size degraded resolution, and improving resolution made the device larger," Professor Jeong Ki-hoon said. "By applying visual principles found in nature, we secured both a wide field of view and stable image quality in an ultra-compact structure."
He added, "This is a new imaging method that can be utilized even in space-constrained environments."
The study was led by Kwon Jae-myung, a doctoral student at KAIST, as first author and was published in Nature Communications, a leading international journal, on March 23.