01. Welcome to the Computer Vision Nanodegree Program

Vision Systems

When I think about computer vision, I often think about how there are many different types of vision systems for different animals and creatures; many animals have evolved vision systems that are tailored to their specific needs!

For instance, bees have compound eyes, which are many tiny eyes bundled together. Compound eyes consist of multiple lenses (as many as 30,000 lenses in a single compound eye); each lens is responsible for focusing light and forming a small section of an image, which allows an insect to see a composite image that’s pieced together from the input that each lens receives! Bee's eyes have really low resolution, so they’re not so great at recognizing things from a distance, but they’re very sensitive to motion, which is essential while flying fast!

There are a variety of vision systems, each with their own strengths, and this is something to keep in mind when we start building and designing systems to perform specific visual tasks in future lessons.

If you’d like to learn more about compound eyes, take a look at this reference.