Ultra-Compact Camera Technology Optimized for VR/AR Devices

Seoul National University College of Engineering announced that researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s Optical Engineering and Quantum Electronics Laboratory have developed an optical design technology that dramatically reduces the volume of cameras with a folded lens system utilizing “metasurfaces,” a next-generation nano-optical device. By arranging metasurfaces on the glass substrate so that light can be reflected and moved around in the glass substrate in a folded manner, the researchers have realized a lens system with a thickness of 0.7 mm, which is much thinner than existing refractive lens systems. The research, which was supported by the Samsung Future Technology Development Program and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP), was published on October 30 in the journal Science Advances. Traditional cameras are designed to stack multiple glass lenses to refract light when capturing images. While this structure provided excellent high-quality images, the thickness of each lens and the wide spacing between lenses increased the overall bulk of the camera, making it difficult to apply to devices that require ultra-compact cameras, such as virtual and augmented reality (VR-AR) devices, smartphones, endoscopes, drones, and more.