From Octopus Eye to Tiny Camera

BusinessWeek|online

Thanks to inspiration from an octopus, fuzzy images from your cell-phone camera could soon be a thing of the past. Case Western Reserve University professor Eric Baer and a team he’s working with at the Naval Research Laboratory have developed a low-cost, single plastic lens that could match the quality of expensive lenses used in cameras. And soon, the lens will also be flexible — allowing people to zoom in and out by giving it a squeeze.