Multi-aperture approaches to miniaturized vision systems

The miniaturization of digital imaging systems is currently reaching both physical and technological limits for conventional setups. Further ongoing miniaturization leads to a reduction the spatial resolution and the signal-to-noise ratio of the digital imaging system. Additionally, there are technological challenges which lead to extremely tight fabrication tolerances and thus represent an unacceptable cost increase for most applications. However, principles found in the smallest known vision systems in Nature demonstrate a way out of this dilemma - the compound eye. The parallel arrangement of multiple small imaging sub-systems - a so-called multi-aperture setup - enables the acquisition of a huge amount of visible information from an extended field of view although the size of the imaging system is extremely small. We demonstrate two different examples of multi-aperture imaging systems which make use of this approach in order to overcome the scaling limits.