NIL Technology Launches metaEye, a Camera Smaller Than Rice

Danish company NIL Technology announced on October 28 the launch of metaEye, an ultra-compact camera designed to be built into smart glasses and AR/VR devices. The module measures just 1.68 × 1.68 × 2.11 mm and weighs 12.9 mg, making it smaller than a grain of rice.

What the camera does

metaEye is meant for eye tracking. On headsets that support the feature, users can look at a title in a list of videos and select it with a pinch gesture. The system works out which item the user is looking at by filming the eye and analyzing the footage to estimate the direction of the gaze. metaEye is the component that captures those images.

It uses near-infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, and records images at 400 × 400 pixels.

Metalenses instead of curved glass

Conventional cameras gather light with several curved lenses stacked together. A metalens works differently: nanoscale structures on its surface control how light travels. In metaEye, NIL Technology stacked two metalenses with no air gap between them. By dropping thick traditional optics, the company says the whole camera can be made thinner and smaller.

That matters because smart glasses frames must hold cameras, sensors and many other parts. An eye-tracking camera this small should make it easier for manufacturers to build glasses with slim, stylish frames rather than bulky ones.

The announcement did not include pricing or details on which products will use the module first.