“Apple, Samsung, Google—everyone is fighting to improve the visible camera every year, right?” said Rob Devlin, CEO and cofounder of Metalenz.
Metalenz has acquired PxE for an undisclosed sum to integrate diffractive optics technology into its existing metasurface camera platform, WIRED reported. The company launched publicly in 2021 to commercialize flat-lens systems using nanostructures that bend light. These systems reduce the need for multiple lens elements over camera sensors while capturing more light. Today, the company has shipped more than 300 million of these metasurface optics to consumer devices.
The underlying technology also captures polarization data. Metalenz is currently working with Qualcomm to create a more effective, secure facial biometric authentication system for Android called Polar ID. This system aims to rival Apple’s Face ID and is expected to arrive on consumer devices at the end of 2027.
PxE’s approach mirrors Metalenz by patterning microscopic structures directly onto image sensors to unlock light data that conventional camera systems throw away.
“A lot of what they’re doing is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into software to try to somehow improve it, but the downside of that is that once information is lost when you’re absorbing all of that light, you can’t really buy it back, even if you’re throwing all of the software into the world at it,” Devlin told WIRED.
Low-light photography and nighttime video capture could see dramatic improvements with PxE’s HoloCoder system. In high-contrast scenes, such as taking a selfie in front of a bright window, the sensor captures more light. It better recreates the scene without blowing out highlights or drowning shadows in noise.
PxE’s technology is not on the market yet. However, because Metalenz has already developed a supply chain, processed an image pipeline, and set up machine learning algorithms to take advantage of these data streams, Devlin believes the HoloCoder will fit neatly into its platform and disrupt the visible sensing market.
While the HoloCoder functions as a diffractive optic rather than a true metasurface, Devlin said Metalenz has already replicated the technology in the lab using its own metasurface optics.
“It’s really then bringing all of that information together through a single approach,” Devlin told WIRED. “We would do a metasurface design where now from a single image sensor, you’re getting all of the information that is in light: You’re getting polarization, you’re getting color without filtering, and you’re getting this depth channel. It’s like the one sensor to rule them all.”
Metalenz launched publicly in 2021 to pioneer the commercialization of flat-lens metasurface systems.
The company has shipped more than 300 million metasurface optics to consumer devices.
Polar ID is expected to arrive on consumer devices at the end of 2027.
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