The natural compound eye system has many outstanding properties, such as a more compact size, wider-angle view, better capacity to detect moving objects, and higher sensitivity to light intensity, compared to that of a single-aperture vision system. Thanks to the development of micro- and nano-fabrication techniques, many artificial compound eye imaging systems have been studied and fabricated to inherit fascinating optical features of the natural compound eye. This paper provides a review of artificial compound eye imaging systems. This review begins by introducing the principle of the natural compound eye, and then, the analysis of two types of artificial compound eye systems. We equally present the applications of the artificial compound eye imaging systems. Finally, we suggest our outlooks about the artificial compound eye imaging system.
Keywords: artificial compound eye; biomimetic system; curved image sensor; high resolution imaging; large field of view imaging; metalens; microlens array.