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[Blake]

With only two eyes apiece, spanning a mere 180-degree field of view, humans have an innately limited understanding of what it means to see. Some insects have compound eyes with hundreds or thousands of facets that can form a nearly 360-degree picture of the world around them. The shells of many scallop species are rimmed by 100 or more brilliant blue eyes; a scallop can’t actually see much (since it doesn’t even have a brain), but its eyes can detect motion from any direction, warning it when to clam up.

Scallop EyesInspired in part by the scallop, engineers at Tenebraex—a small Boston company that makes optical equipment for the military—are unveiling a new type of surveillance camera today that combines images from five separate image sensors, each equivalent to the camera in a typical cell phone. Each camera has a roughly 40-degree field of view, and when stitched together, the five video feeds span a full 180 degrees, giving security personnel a comprehensive real-time view of a scene without the distortion created by traditional fisheye lenses, and without the delays created by remote-control pan-and-tilt cameras. Tenebraex’s engineers call the device the Digital Window, and it’s the debut product for Scallop Imaging, a new Tenebraex subsidiary that hopes to sell its technology to camera makers and system integrators in the security industry. READ MORE