As a matter of course, cameras are integrated in the field of information and communication technology. It can be observed, that there is a trend that those cameras get smaller and at the same time cheaper. Because single aperture have a limit of miniaturization, while simultaneously keeping the same space-bandwidth-product and transmitting a wide field of view, there is a need of new ideas like the multi aperture optical systems. In the proposed camera system the image is formed with many different channels each consisting of four microlenses which are arranged one after another in different microlens arrays. A partial image which fits together with the neighbouring one is formed in every single channel, so that a real erect image is generated and a conventional image sensor can be used. The microoptical fabrication process and the assembly are well established and can be carried out on wafer-level. Laser writing is used for the fabrication of the masks. UV-lithography, a reflow process and UV-molding is needed for the fabrication of the apertures and the lenses. The developed system is very small in terms of both length and lateral dimensions and has a VGA resolution and a diagonal field of view of 65 degrees. This microoptical vision system is appropriate for being implemented in electronic devices such as webcams integrated in notebookdisplays.

Wafer-level optics is considered as a cost-effective approach to miniaturized cameras, because fabrication and assembly are carried out for thousands of lenses in parallel. However, in most cases the micro-optical fabrication process is not mature enough to reach the required accuracy of the optical elements, which may have complex profiles and sags in the mm-scale. Contrary, the creation of microlens arrays is well controllable so that we propose a multi aperture system called "Optical Cluster Eye" which is based on conventional micro-optical fabrication techniques. The proposed multi aperture camera consists of many optical channels each transmitting a segment of the whole field of view. The design of the system provides the stitching of the partial images, so that a seamless image is formed and a commercially available image sensor can be used. The system can be fabricated on wafer-level with high yield due to small aperture diameters and low sags. The realized optics has a lateral size of 2.2 × 2.9 mm2, a total track length of 1.86 mm, and captures images at VGA video resolution.