THE VIBRATING eyes of jumping spiders have inspired a new breed of vision
sensors that could give the next generation of Mars rovers sharper eyesight, say
researchers in California. As a result, the roving robots will need less
computing power, so they’ll be much lighter and will use less electricity.
Today’s robot-vision systems sense images focused onto an array of picture
elements on a microchip. Each picture element, or pixel, is generated by a
photoreceptor that converts light intensity into an electrical signal. The
sensors generate huge quantities of data many times per second—so they
need complex computer circuitry…
