Measuring arc motion in circuit switching devices is crucial to understanding their behaviour and refining their design.

Arcing events are brief (often entirely completed in <10ms) and explosive with an extremely high dynamic range of event intensity. The transient arc motion during these events can be measured in terms of micro or even nanoseconds. These characteristics make conventional photography and ultra-high speed video impractical.

In nature the solution to track rapid motion is the compound eye where an array of micro lenses operate together.