Ultrawide field-of-view metasurface flat-optics platform

Year 2020
Project team Juejun Hu & Tian Gu with Mikhail Shalaginov
180 degree field of view
High resolution performance
Planar focus ideal for optical integration

Novel metasurface flat optics

Developing novel metasurface flat optics for ultra-compact, high-performance optical imaging, sensing, projection, and display. The technology features: a hemispherical 180° field of view; high-resolution, aberration-free performance over the entire field of view; a simple and ultra-compact architecture involving a single flat optical component; and a planar focal plane ideal for optical system integration. The architecture can be tailored for both detecting and emitting light beams over a wide range of operation wavelengths. It would enable applications such as ultrawide-angle 3D sensing, eye tracking, retinal imaging, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and immersive augmented reality and virtual reality.

2Pi Optics

The technology from this project was spun out into a company, 2Pi Optics

Tian Gu presents Ultrawide-Field-of-View Metasurface Flat Optics at IdeaStream 2021.

Engineers produce a fisheye lens that’s completely flat

Engineers at MIT and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell have designed a wide-angle lens that is completely flat. It is the first flat fisheye lens to produce crisp, 180-degree panoramic images.