Technology
New Information for Machine Vision
PolarEyes is the world’s first and only optical module that maps the complete polarization information of a scene in a mobile form factor. A polarization-sorting metasurface on the sensor, paired with an imaging pipeline and ML, instantly reveals material make-up and depth: new information for machine vision, from one camera.
The technology
The power of polarized light.
When light reflects off a surface it becomes polarized in ways that encode shape and material. Conventional optics throw this information away. A metasurface captures it.
01
Reflection polarizes light
Every surface polarizes reflected light according to its geometry.
02
Polarization cues shape
The polarization pattern reveals 3D structure.
03
Depolarization cues material
It also reveals what a surface is made of: skin vs. silicone or a screen.
Sorting light, instead of filtering it
A standard sensor puts a filter over each pixel. PolarEyes places a metasurface on the sensor that directs light by its polarization to the right pixels.
Standard filter-based sensor
Each pixel sees light through a single filter.
Metasurface-on-sensor
The metasurface sorts full polarization information to individual pixels.
A new standard for secure face authentication.
Polar ID is the first full stack product built on the PolarEyes platform: one camera that recognizes a face and confirms it belongs to a live person, with no dot projector and no second illuminator.
- Seamless payment-grade security that rejects even the most realistic 3D masks.
- Polar ID camera encodes polarized light information, efficient compute pipeline decodes to reveal material, surface and liveness data- all from a single image.
- Works under the display, for true all-screen designs.
Spoof-proof face authentication with Polar ID
Reliably rejects face-spoofing masks and 2D photos with one single polarized image, safeguarding consumer devices against unauthorized access.
Explore Polar ID →Enhanced 3D sensing
More detail to detect shapes and edges with increased contrast, improving the speed and performance of 3D object scanning in AR/VR environments.
Material classification
Identifies what objects and surfaces are made of: alerting drivers to hazards like black ice, helping robots handle shiny objects, and supporting skin assessment from a smartphone.
Anti-glare vision
Removes the reflected glare that often overpowers machine vision, so cars, robots and drones can maneuver more precisely and safely.
From the lab into your smartphone
Powerful lab cameras, shrunk to fit any device.
Traditional polarization imaging requires a complex array of light splitters and filters, resulting in modules too large, expensive and inefficient for mass markets or small devices. PolarEyes shrinks these powerful lab cameras into a single metasurface layer built on a standard sensor, combining physics and optics, software and hardware to bring new information to mass market machine vision systems.
The Polar pipeline
Same hardware. Many applications.
The same polarization metasurface and compute pipeline power Polar ID and Polar 3D, turning one hardware platform into a growing family of products.
Same across every application
01
Hardware
A drop-in polarization metasurface on a standard NIR sensor, paired with flood illumination.
02
ML / AI compute
An imaging pipeline reconstructs the polarization scene; models are trained on data only PolarEyes hardware produces.
Application-specific products
Explore Polar ID →
- Payment-grade face authentication, all conditions performance
- Seamless, continuous, secure interaction with AI
Future applications
New uses for the same hardware and pipeline, in development.
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