MetaLenz PolarEyes: Polarized Light for Enhanced Digital Sensing

The Potential of Polarized Light Sensing

Modern technology allows for data perception beyond human capabilities, integrating data streams from sources like lidar, infrared, and ultrasonic sensors. Metalenz, a company specializing in compact camera technology, is developing PolarEyes, a system designed to incorporate polarized light sensing for enhanced security and safety applications.

Understanding Polarization

While often overlooked, the polarization of light – relating to the orientation of a photon’s wave – provides valuable information about the materials an object is composed of. Typically, standard light analysis is sufficient, but polarization offers unique insights.

According to Rob Devlin, co-founder and CEO of Metalenz, polarization can reveal details invisible to conventional cameras. “It can identify contrast that normal cameras miss,” he explains. “In healthcare, it’s historically been utilized to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells, where visible changes are absent but polarization reveals distinctions.”

Current Limitations and Metalenz’s Innovation

Currently, polarized light cameras are largely confined to specialized medical and industrial applications due to their high cost and substantial size. These factors preclude their use in everyday consumer devices.

Metalenz has achieved a breakthrough in the reliable and cost-effective manufacturing of intricate, micro-scale 3D optical features. This allows for the creation of highly effective cameras on a chip. These devices are already being integrated into industrial 3D sensing modules, in collaboration with STMicroelectronics.

Applications in Security and Automotive Safety

The potential applications of polarization sensing extend to consumer-relevant areas. “In facial recognition, it can distinguish between genuine human skin and silicone masks or high-resolution photographs,” Devlin states. “Within the automotive industry, it enables the detection of black ice, a challenge for standard cameras but readily apparent with polarization.”

The technology could be implemented as a small unit alongside existing cameras, similar to the lidar systems used in iPhones for facial scanning. Instead of lasers, a polarized light sensor would divide the image into four perspectives, each representing a different polarization axis.

Material Differentiation and Enhanced Scene Understanding

Polarized light excels at differentiating materials, as skin reflects light differently than a realistic mask or photograph. This enhanced security feature could be attractive to phone manufacturers seeking to improve “Face ID” functionality without relying on complex lidar technology.

Furthermore, identifying the material composition of each pixel in a scene is typically a complex process. Polarization data offers instant material differentiation, a capability also found in Voyant’s lidar systems. Even a limited number of polarized pixels – one per hundred standard pixels – can provide significant scene insight.

Progress and Future Development

Metalenz is actively reducing the size of its polarized camera units. They have progressed from breadbox-sized industrial models to cracker-sized prototypes and are currently developing a Skittle-sized camera stack suitable for integration into robots, cars, laptops, and potentially even smartphones.

The company is currently funded by an A round led by 3M, Applied Ventures, Intel, TDK, and others – investors typically drawn to promising new component technologies. Given the positive reception to their initial sensor, Metalenz anticipates another funding round to support scaling efforts.

Image Credits: Metalenz Image Credits: Metalenz