'Insect Eye Mimicry' Enables Ultra-Fast Motion Recognition in 0.01 Seconds

Yonsei University Research Team Develops Optical Sensor

Domestic researchers have developed an optical sensor that can recognize ultra-fast movements by mimicking the eyes of insects.

Insect. Stock photo. Not related to the article.

On the 21st, Yonsei University announced that a research team led by Professor An Jong-hyun of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and PhD candidate Kim Beom-jin developed an optical sensor that mimics the visual neural functions of insect eyes by utilizing the unique optical properties of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a two-dimensional semiconductor material. This is evaluated as a solution to the efficient motion recognition problem, which has been considered a challenge in the field of computing.

The research team focused on the unique graded neuron structure of flying insects such as flies, which shows much more efficient ultra-fast motion recognition performance than any semiconductor image sensor developed so far, and aimed to develop an optical sensor that mimics the neural structure of insect eyes.

Research results on motion recognition photodetectors based on two-dimensional material MoS2. The implemented photodetector can recognize movements with high accuracy, ranging from very slow to very fast motions. Image source=Yonsei University

The research team succeeded in implementing an optical sensor with characteristics similar to the neural cell functions of insect eyes by utilizing the unique optical properties of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a two-dimensional semiconductor material. The MoS2 optical sensor developed by the team can transmit information at 1200 bits per second. It can recognize object movements with a time resolution ranging from 0.01 seconds to 1000 seconds and a high accuracy of 99.2%. It is expected to be applicable in various fields such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, and machine vision.

The research results were published online on the same day in the international journal on nanotechnology, Nature Nanotechnology.

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