Metalenz Launches Orion™, the World’s Simplest, Most Compact Dot Pattern Projector.
Metalenz Launches Orion™, the World’s Simplest, Most Compact Dot Pattern Projector.
• Metalenz’s simpler dot projectors enable 3D sensing to proliferate to all smartphones.
• Metalenz has secured high volume manufacturing partnerships and has customers in the queue, with broad availability of evaluation kits in June.
Boston, MA, May 26 2021 : Metalenz Inc., the pioneer in metasurface design and commercialization, today unveiled the OrionTM product family, the world’s simplest, high performance dot pattern projectors. Current dot pattern projectors, used in mobile devices for features like facial recognition and 3D sensing, have been a logistic and aesthetic headache for cell phone manufactures–eating up valuable space, interrupting the phone display and requiring complex assembly of many different components.
Using its patented metasurface technology, the Orion product family is a simplified and more efficient solution that is bound to displace refractive lens and diffractive element optical stacks with a single meta-optic. “If you look at dot pattern projectors in cell phones today, these are some of the most complex and bulky modules in the phone.” said Robert Devlin, co-founder/CEO, Metalenz. “The size, complexity and cost has limited 3D sensing and face unlock to just the top tier cell phone companies. What Metalenz provides with our meta-optic technology is the simplest possible approach. We’re able to improve the system level performance while replacing as many as six optics in the current modules with a single meta-optic. This results in a size reduction in all three dimensions. Ultimately, the Orion product line will enable under-display sensing and allow much broader adoption of 3D sensing and face unlock features across all cell phones.”
Metalenz’s patented Orion pattern projector product line is set to replace current 3D optical configurations in smartphones because of its advantages:
● Simpler – replaces as many as six optical parts in an illumination system (refractive lenses, mirrors, DOE) with a single meta-optic piece.
● Smaller – collapses form factor to fit in the tightest of spaces, hiding under screens or in the tiniest of nooks in a phone.
● Brighter – light projected to where it is needed the most for high resolution constellations or out far out distances, balancing performance and power savings.
● Better – architecture drastically lowers assembly complexity and cost to drive more depth sensing sockets for user authentication and AR.
The advantages of Orion products extend to both structured light (SL) and time of flight (ToF) 3D depth sensing solutions. The meta-optics improve system level signal-to-noise-ratio, resulting in better performance in sunlight, higher resolution, longer sensing distances, and improved battery life.
The Orion 50, the highest dot density product in the family, boasts more than 50,000 projected dots with an optical module height thin enough for the most advanced mobile devices. It radically simplifies what has traditionally been a six element stack (four refractive lenses, mirrors to achieve a folded optical path, and a DOE) into one single meta-optic system. Orion 50 means component reduction, tiny size, performance we are accustomed to, and dramatically easier manufacturing. This simplification will enable more phone makers to put sensors and cameras beneath a device’s glass display and ultimately in the palms of our hands.
On the flip side, smartphones with world-facing (a.k.a the back of the phone) 3D depth sensing cameras deliver professional looking photography effects like bokeh and are enabling emerging AR applications. Depth sensing cameras rely on active illumination of the scene with lasers and capture of reflected light with specialized ToF sensors. Illuminating brighter to cover greater distances and flooding the scene for long periods of time can be a major drain on a phone’s battery life. These are the antithesis of bringing forth more immersive and encompassing AR applications.
Orion 2.5 projects 2,500 high intensity dots into the scene so more light will travel the distance back to the image sensor. High resolution depth information is made possible at distances of 10 meters or more. Orion 2.5 conserves power and enables a new arena for AR in smartphones, head mounted displays, and consumer electronics. It stays true to the Orion family roots – simpler, brighter, better optics – while doing away with system complexity and driving down the barriers for integration and board adoption.
About Metalenz Metalenz, founded in 2016 is the first company to commercialize meta-optics. The company is backed by leading investors including 3M, Applied Ventures LLC, Intel Capital, M Ventures and TDK Ventures. The company has the exclusive worldwide license to the portfolio of foundational intellectual property relating to metasurfaces developed in the Capasso Lab at Harvard University and has more than 20 patents on innovations that simplify and improve optical devices across multiple markets. Recently featured in TechCrunch, Wired, The New York Times, and Forbes.
With its recent flat-lens technological achievements, manufacturing partnerships in place, and growing customer list, Metalenz is poised to revolutionize sensing in smartphones and consumer electronics.
Metalenz Launches with $10M from 3M, Applied Ventures, Intel Capital, M Ventures, and TDK to Power the Next Generation of Smartphone Sensors
Metalenz Launches with $10M from 3M, Applied Ventures, Intel Capital, M Ventures, and TDK to Power the Next Generation of Smartphone Sensors
Startup Pioneering New Microchip Lens with Structures 1000x Smaller than a Human Hair Partners with Consumer Electronic Giants to Revolutionize Mobile Device Sensors
Boston, MA – Thursday, February 4, 2021 : Metalenz, the first company to commercialize meta-optics, today officially launched out of stealth and announced it has raised $10 million from 3M Ventures, Applied Ventures LLC, Intel Capital, M Ventures and TDK Ventures, along with Tsingyuan Ventures and Braemar Energy Ventures. The new investment allows Metalenz to scale production and accelerate the development of miniature optics on a chip technology and its radically new lens that will power the next generation of sensors for use in smartphones and other consumer, healthcare, and automotive applications.
Commercializing meta-optic technology pioneered at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Metalenz was co-founded by Robert Devlin, PhD, and professor of applied physics Federico Capasso, PhD. With a decade of research behind it and 15 issued patents on the concept, the company has an intellectual property head start and is already engaged with a number of the world’s largest manufacturers in the consumer electronics and automotive spaces, from OEMs to subsystem makers.
“Over the past 20 years, most of the advances in camera and sensing technology in consumer electronics has been to electronics and algorithms but the optics themselves have remained relatively unchanged. At Metalenz we’re providing new functionality to lenses that enable large-scale production in the same semiconductor foundries making the electronics for the first time,” said Rob Devlin, co-founder and CEO of Metalenz. “We’re thrilled to welcome tier 1 semiconductor leaders as investment partners as we bring entirely new forms of sensing to consumer electronics that will eventually revolutionize everything from automotive and healthcare industries to phones, augmented reality, and deskless workforces.”
A Flat Lens with Structures 1000x Smaller than a Human Hair Poised to Revolutionize Mobile Devices
Despite the improvements in cameras, lens technology has remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of years. The emerging field of meta-optics, or optical metasurfaces, centers on engineered materials with patterned structures 1000x smaller than a human hair specifically designed to exploit properties that cannot be obtained from bulk natural materials.
Unique meta-optic properties permit the combination of several lenses into a single, thin, and flat surface and unlock new possibilities including improved 3D sensing and new sensors that can fit under the display of a cell phone. The result is lenses that enable a brighter, higher quality infrared picture than conventional lenses are able to produce. For consumers, this means more powerful phone capabilities that can help them snap more professional looking pictures, even in the most challenging environments, while promoting longer battery life.
“Metalenz is pioneering a lens that is thinner, lighter, and far less complex than other lens solutions, by leveraging an incredibly unique and transformative materials technology which is grounded in years of scientific research,” said Andrew Maywah, Investment Director at TDK Ventures. “TDK is excited to partner with Metalenz and apply its ecosystem and technology expertise in optical sensing and actuation to further innovate on lens solutions that will have a major impact on cameras and illuminators in smartphones, cameras, and laptops worldwide.”
“Applied Ventures is excited to continue its support of the Metalenz team as part of our growing portfolio of companies spanning Materials to Systems™. Applied’s broad materials engineering capabilities can help Metalenz continue advancing its disruptive flat optical technology that allows for advanced manipulation of light and the potential to combine multiple refractive lenses into a single stack,” said Jaclyn Kossman, Senior Investment Manager at Applied Ventures.
Metalenz holds an exclusive worldwide license, through Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development, to a portfolio of foundational intellectual property relating to metasurfaces developed in the Capasso Lab at Harvard SEAS.
As a fabless semiconductor company, Metalenz is able to focus resources on engineering and development, allowing for a quick ramp-up in production of its meta-optics to meet market demands of fast, high volume consumer electronics companies, scaling to produce millions of high quality units quickly, while keeping production costs down.
“TDK is excited to partner with Metalenz and apply its ecosystem and technology expertise in optical sensing and actuation to further innovate on lens solutions that will have a major impact on cameras and illuminators in smartphones, cameras, and laptops worldwide.”
