Materials, design, and fabrication of curved image sensors for bio-inspired, AI-friendly vision systems

Abstract Robotic vision serves as a crucial sensing modality in perception for artificial intelligence (AI), enabling mobile robots to recognize their environments with human-level intelligence. However, conventional complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors are not ideal for mobile robotic vision, because their planar form factor necessitates bulky and heavy optical assemblies and power- and time-intensive corrective computations. Bio-inspired vision systems, enabled by the advent of curved image sensors, provide optimal solutions for mobile robotics, enabling AI-friendly imaging functionalities without compromising mobility. In this review, we summarize recent advances in bio-inspired vision systems, with a special focus on curved image sensors and their biologically motivated implementations in robotic vision systems. We first introduce fabrication strategies for cu…