For the people kinda worried: this is a highly specialized piece of glass that is extremely complicated to manufacture at present and must, due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent. It's not going to allow surveillance through existing glass installations in any form, just possibly new ones if there's room for the support equipment and through the use of 4-5 digit piles of cash.
Any camera glass like this will have at least a mild tint and will be used in specialty applications. It'll also have pretty horrible SNR, resolution, and low light performance.
Currently the structural component of this tech is mainly used in extremely high end aerospace applications (various heads up display type systems) so it's unlikely you'll ever run across one of these within the next decade.
Nasty remote sensing tech people can be worried about right now: RF surveillance from various combinations of mmWave, wall penetrating radar, and wifi interferometry. Add in the fact that your IPhone has mac randomization but every other device you own including your car's TPMS doesn't. Also Geiger mode lidar is fun, one company I worked for mapped the inside of a random person's house with it as a demo.
>For the people kinda worried: this is a highly specialized piece of glass that is extremely complicated to manufacture at present and must, due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent. It's not going to allow surveillance through existing glass installations in any form
If you're worried that your Airbnb host is going to use it to spy on you (which was mentioned in the article), unless you already scrutinize every nail hole, photo frame, electrical appliance, electrical outlets, smoke detector, etc, this doesn't open up a new vulnerability.
Pinhole cameras with a lens as small as 2mm are already readily available and cheap, no ones going to use an expensive "window camera" to spy on you when they already have so many other options.
Perhaps those that fear government surveillance or other well funded adversaries may have cause for concern, but few of us are in that category.
> due to the laws of thermodynamics, not be 100% transparent.
How useful is this statement though? Regular glass isn't 100% transparent either, even in just the visible spectrum. Shouldn't we be more concerned with the delta in the visible spectrum is if we're concerned about easy identification? (before mentioning that plenty of glass is purposefully tinted and dynamic tinting is an application here) And reasonably, couldn't we, theoretically, pick up a decent signal from simply capturing the reflections around the glass edge? I mean we can now do 3D reconstructions from pointing a camera at a mirrored ball. I'm sure it'd be very noisy, but there is signal. I mean to have the capability of projecting you'd have the ability to do the reverse too given that I doubt the internal structure of the glass would be (that) directionally dependent. Right? I can be missing something, it's been awhile since I've done optics.
Thanks. The original description made this seem like far-future technological magic. A system that can somehow analyze a random pane of glass and derive all the transformations needed to use it as a high-precision waveguide? I actually had a manager ask me to develop such a thing, and I asked him how many dozen optics PhDs I could hire to accomplish this feat.
I assure you it is semi opaque. A one way mirror is a primitive example of this. You can make the reflection increasingly transparent but it will be tinted up until the point it doesn't reflect anything.
It may not be noticeably visible to the human eye under most lighting conditions, though.
Neither do most storefront windows and yet they're often made to reduce the transmission of UV light to protect displayed goods from sunlight or intentionally darkened so they're less transparent when the display is not lit up. You just don't notice it normally or dismiss it as an effect of ordinary glare, which is the point.
I agree that this shouldn't be anywhere near the top of people's privacy concern list. A $1 traditional digital camera can already be hidden very easily and this probably costs thousands of dollars at least if you could even get it.
There are some places where a not-completely 90% transparent piece of glass might not raise too much suspicion, but it could be more difficult to retrofit with a more traditional "pinhole" style spycam.
Like the wall of a shower stall, which you would expect to be less than 100% transparent.
I do think this threat model is less likely, however.
What I think is more likely is a Minority Report style system where there are pervasive cameras everywhere, constantly scanning your face, etc.... Maybe not constantly scanning your retinas and identifying you that way, but facial recognition alone would be more than enough. Either way, once you're recognized, you could be easily tracked silently, or you could be called out publicly by a nearby display.
> It's not going to allow surveillance through existing glass installations in any form, just possibly new ones if there's room for the support equipment and through the use of 4-5 digit piles of cash.
I agree. I had this worrying idea (realisation..?) that one day, maybe triple digit years away, maybe sooner, that tiny cameras and mics the size of grains of salt will be everywhere. They will cost nothing to produce, be self-charging, interconnected to each other and created to ‘reduce crime’ or ‘make you safer’. And in the same way as forever chemicals, you can’t get rid of them. Trillions of them, in fields, the ground. Spreading around stuck to your shoes, on your car tires.
Just a crazy idea, but I think that if they could make that happen today then they would. And that part is the main point - There is no limit to surveillance anymore. I live in the UK, that realisation is in my face every day. Can’t even take a trip to Tesco without being run through facial recognition.
There is no care for the concept of privacy anymore. All the richest companies in the world don’t make their money from caring about our privacy.
The article is poorly written, as it only discusses the camera component. Strangely, they chose stock images of holographic and optical displays, but didn’t mention that even once.
1) ZEISS unveils holographic Smart Glass at CES 2024, both for displays/projection/filtering, but also another component which is a holographic camera
2) The holocam works by utilizing coupling, decoupling, and light guiding elements to redirect incident light to a concealed sensor, eliminating the need for visible cutouts or installation spaces in visible areas.
3) ZEISS doesn’t plan to be manufacturer, so other companies can use the tech
> The Holocam technology "uses holographic in-coupling, light guiding and de-coupling elements to redirect the incoming light of a transparent medium to a hidden image sensor."
That suggests, at least to me, that you'll need something more than just a simple sheet of glass. There's probably some engineering required to allow light to be guided and redirected towards what sounds like a typical camera sensor.
Edit: theres an actually good demo video showing the real state of the tech rather than mockups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NORPeCcIXRQ buried below in the comments so just surfacing higher. everything else is artists lying to you.
---
> Glass surfaces can also generate energy. The microoptical layer in the window pane absorbs incident sunlight and transmits it in concentrated form to a solar cell. This combines the advantages of conventional windows – natural light and an unrestricted view – with the additional benefit of efficient energy production.
Nah, this will only be good enough for sensor-level power (like 5W from a whole window). Only useful in very limited circumstances. It's not going to replace normal solar power.
> coupling, decoupling and light guiding elements to divert incident light to a concealed sensor
So, there's a camera in the dash looking up at the windshield and focusing where it expects to see a face, thereby using the windshield as a reflector? And maybe there's some additional etching and deposited films in the windshield to support the angles required?
And perhaps you can put cameras elsewhere, and similarly subtly modify the windshield or other glass to look at other things as well?
>ESA and NASA space missions have carried this trailblazing ZEISS technology on board for many years. It is also well established in the semiconductor and medical technology sectors.
Huh. Seems like it should be fairly easy to find info on then... though some googling around makes me think they might just be referring to their more general diffraction gratings and whatnot.
Second, #3 is always a red flag for me. It is sometimes code for "we can do this in the lab but we have no idea how one would manufacture it." A similar analogy is "we've got this great idea for a program you can license but no one here knows how to actually code it up."
Third, the impact of this going mainstream would be hard to underestimate. All those people working on transparent displays like they do in sci-fi movies? Yup they could do that. A video conference system with solid eye contact (mentioned in a couple of places) sure you could do that too. A mirror that could show you wearing different clothes? Yup I could see how that would be coded.
That #3 though. That is what tempers my enthusiasm. Did I miss any announcement that they had a display at CES? (or was it just an announcement) If the former I would seriously consider flying over to Vegas to check this out.
Does Zeiss manufacture any public facing camera currently ? All their general public facing projects are collaborations with Sony or Vivo or other makers, and I think they only manufacture lenses, so nothing with a high quality chip in it.
It's probably another story on the medical side, but this doesn't fit a highly specialized, peofessional only niche with a PC doing the processor on the side.
It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe).
The principal issue will be gathering enough energy. A well lit source like a bathroom mirror (mirror behind the light guide) could work pretty well I'd wager. If the light guide is too efficient then it will appear opaque, so there is a trade-off.
I find "turns any window" pretty misleading. Unless I'm missing something this needs very special glass or at the very least a special coating/laminate.
For folks worried about privacy, it will almost always be more convenient and cost-effective to install a tiny spy camera somewhere.
Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.
> Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.
Especially true since Zeiss isn't planning on selling these at all. They're selling licenses to the tech.
I doubt that undermines your privacy argument in any meaningful way however. Even if the license was free, the cost of producing the components is certainly magnitudes higher compared to the cost of current tech that accomplishes similar goals.
I remember a friend on a team adjacent to the surface table team talking about them trying to do this when they switched from projection tables to tables with screens in them. As I recall with the projector based tables (the ones that looked like old cocktail arcade tables) I think they were using an ir camera to detect items and touches on the 'screen'.
> It's a reverse light guide. We've been beam forming for a long time, it's unsurprising that the reverse is possible (imaging through a light pipe).
Beamforming in RF frequencies is old, beamforming at optical wavelengths is pretty new shit. Doing the reverse, that is receiving a signal, is brand spanking new fresh out the cow hot shit at any frequency.
No, it's not really new. Small form factor is relatively new but even then the issue lies in yield and quality control.
Projector light engines include potentially many light-beam forming condensing and projection lenses precisely to concentrate light into a uniform quadrilateral. That's not new. The industry continues to advance, though.
Even holographic projection isn't new. This is just that, except the light is (sort of) taking the reverse path.
Technically there is no reason why it can't also project light outwards simultaneously. However light guides aren't really reversible like that: the light usually exits through a small fraction of the guide's external surface area. Reversing that means the entire external surface area is potentially collecting light, which would result in some undesirable caustics in all scenarios I can imagine. Light engines are in part designed to account for this (by reflecting or sinking light into an absorber) but this is still pretty different from what Zeiss is promoting.
For a small permanent installation where you are in control of the lighting I could see this working relatively well, but I have a hard time imagining you could get close anything resembling photo quality without a lot of environmental treatment. Conversely holographic projection is pretty doable on a mobile platform like a headset.
This is pretty new only in that it's probably at least an order of magnitude more difficult to accomplish and thus hasn't been viable up until now. Fundamentally none of the concepts are new, as far as I can tell.
As an example look at your nearest window and imagine it divided into a grid of uniform pixels. Each pixel is a small mirror that reflects a point of focus (wherever you are) to a another, smaller point on an imaging sensor somewhere in the frame. This would look pretty jarring (and jagged) to most people, until you layer a complimentary piece of glass on top of it to make the exterior flush. The two pieces of glass would be high enough precision that once you put them together they are effectively one piece of glass. Ta da.
This is effectively the same process as making any other multi-lensed glass, and that's Zeiss's wheelhouse.
3D print lenses in a header for threads to be arbitrarily placed in a [COMPOUND] lens and pull that feed with AI spatial mapping (yes these are easy now)... EYE
And you can make these in many increments - micro even... "Hey NSa, super simple optical prince Rupert drops on a composite eye" (self destrucing fiber lens when discovered)
As a side hustle, why don’t you start building and selling desktop PC’s to local businesses, competing with HP, Dell, etc on margin? That’s also tech, right?
While building cheap PCs at razor thin margins is adjacent to whatever your tech job is, and probably something you’re able to do, it probably wouldn’t be the most profitable use of your time
Years ago I was able to visit Zeiss in Oberkochen. They had a fantastic headquarters with a few older lithographs. I think a couple of the instruments were 80 millions dollars or so.
There’s a facility across from the Autobahn that was so sensitive trucks going by would throw off their machines. They had to put padding on the autobahn to prevent it. This was after they put the foundation on some kind of suspension. My coworker said they hire the most PHDs in Europe.
You need to attract PHDs and account for logistics. If you want to attract top talent you need to be in a desirable place or be a desirable place with access to desirable places.
Sounds like LIGO, but they're in the US. They had to put the AC unit for their entire facility on suspension because their instruments were so sensitive. And they ask people to not accelerate or decelerate so quickly when driving around the campus.
> Given the current fear around hidden cameras in Airbnbs, the idea of every single window (or even shower door) in a rental property being able to spy on you is a little disconcerting.
While there are some really interesting potential applications for this tech, it is also more than a little disconcerting.
The ubiquity of camera phones and the emergence of tech like those Meta glasses is already pushing us to disconcerting (albeit interesting and in some cases very useful) places, but some of these cutting edge concepts worry me. WiFi seeing through walls also comes to mind…
I'm surprised this isn't the top comment. I'm all for the benefits of this tech, and hadn't even thought about the airbnb style implication.
People didn't like that Google Glass could always be filming, now we don't even have a physical camera.
Rayban/Meta (I believe) have a sensor to detect that the wearer has not attempted to cover the light which shows that the camera is in use, but how will that work when every piece of glass is a camera.
After some searching I found a patent I think may be related to this https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2020225109A1/en because it uses the phrase "Holocam", is German and was filed by Audi (the press release mentions automotive applications as the primary initial use case). It's a translation from German which makes it a bit tougher to parse than the usual patent.
The total lack of any deeper information beyond the bold yet vague claims in the press release is frustrating. The PR makes it sound like a miraculous breakthrough destined to change everything. The source release on the Zeiss site only adds two bits of info.
> "The transparency of the holographic layer has only a minimal effect on the brilliance of the image reproduction. It is also possible to detect spectral components as additional information to complement the visible image. The resulting data provide insights into environmental contamination such as air pollution and UV exposure."
However, experience shows that in reality bold+vague claims like this inevitably come with significant trade-offs and constraints which limit its applications (little things like cost, power, fidelity, size, speed, etc). This is especially true in early implementations of new tech. That said, it may still be both interesting and useful. Unfortunately, we have no way to even think about how it might be useful because Zeiss marketing has chosen to play 'hide the ball' instead of just releasing a technical explainer outlining relevant trade-offs, limitations, etc.
If I was talking to someone from Zeiss my first questions would be about how much the additional components impact the optical characteristics of the glass, what the resolution of the resulting image data is, how large are the components needed at the edges and how far away can they be from the capture zone? Then, of course, how the output of the resulting imaging system maps into traditional camera/lens metrics like f-stops, aperture, imager size/density, gain, focal length, etc. Zeiss is an optics company after all.
> Glass surfaces can also generate energy. The microoptical layer in the window pane absorbs incident sunlight and transmits it in concentrated form to a solar cell. This combines the advantages of conventional windows – natural light and an unrestricted view – with the additional benefit of efficient energy production.
Agree. Obviously a few orders of magnitude in cost reduction would be required... but this seem like it could have interesting potential for energy generation in high-rise buildings, which currently have near-zero solar footprint. With that said, the lack of any mention regarding efficiency makes this part of the press release seem like a bit of smoke and, erm, mirrors.
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Any camera glass like this will have at least a mild tint and will be used in specialty applications. It'll also have pretty horrible SNR, resolution, and low light performance.
Currently the structural component of this tech is mainly used in extremely high end aerospace applications (various heads up display type systems) so it's unlikely you'll ever run across one of these within the next decade.
Nasty remote sensing tech people can be worried about right now: RF surveillance from various combinations of mmWave, wall penetrating radar, and wifi interferometry. Add in the fact that your IPhone has mac randomization but every other device you own including your car's TPMS doesn't. Also Geiger mode lidar is fun, one company I worked for mapped the inside of a random person's house with it as a demo.
If you're worried that your Airbnb host is going to use it to spy on you (which was mentioned in the article), unless you already scrutinize every nail hole, photo frame, electrical appliance, electrical outlets, smoke detector, etc, this doesn't open up a new vulnerability.
Pinhole cameras with a lens as small as 2mm are already readily available and cheap, no ones going to use an expensive "window camera" to spy on you when they already have so many other options.
Perhaps those that fear government surveillance or other well funded adversaries may have cause for concern, but few of us are in that category.
It's perhaps worth noting, however, that it wouldn't be unusual for a window to have only ~60% transmittance in visible spectrum.
How useful is this statement though? Regular glass isn't 100% transparent either, even in just the visible spectrum. Shouldn't we be more concerned with the delta in the visible spectrum is if we're concerned about easy identification? (before mentioning that plenty of glass is purposefully tinted and dynamic tinting is an application here) And reasonably, couldn't we, theoretically, pick up a decent signal from simply capturing the reflections around the glass edge? I mean we can now do 3D reconstructions from pointing a camera at a mirrored ball. I'm sure it'd be very noisy, but there is signal. I mean to have the capability of projecting you'd have the ability to do the reverse too given that I doubt the internal structure of the glass would be (that) directionally dependent. Right? I can be missing something, it's been awhile since I've done optics.
It may not be noticeably visible to the human eye under most lighting conditions, though.
It's still creepy though.
The truly pathetic thing is that virtually all of these devices could use RPA but don't, because nobody remembered to flip that flag from "n" to "y"
Like the wall of a shower stall, which you would expect to be less than 100% transparent.
I do think this threat model is less likely, however.
What I think is more likely is a Minority Report style system where there are pervasive cameras everywhere, constantly scanning your face, etc.... Maybe not constantly scanning your retinas and identifying you that way, but facial recognition alone would be more than enough. Either way, once you're recognized, you could be easily tracked silently, or you could be called out publicly by a nearby display.
Total surveillance is just a matter of time...
Just a crazy idea, but I think that if they could make that happen today then they would. And that part is the main point - There is no limit to surveillance anymore. I live in the UK, that realisation is in my face every day. Can’t even take a trip to Tesco without being run through facial recognition.
There is no care for the concept of privacy anymore. All the richest companies in the world don’t make their money from caring about our privacy.
Deleted Comment
5 figures doesn't sound like much for an organized crime network
I mean, this will be worse if the tech advances no?
The Zeiss site is a much better read:
https://www.zeiss.com/corporate/en/about-zeiss/present/newsr...
In summary:
1) ZEISS unveils holographic Smart Glass at CES 2024, both for displays/projection/filtering, but also another component which is a holographic camera
2) The holocam works by utilizing coupling, decoupling, and light guiding elements to redirect incident light to a concealed sensor, eliminating the need for visible cutouts or installation spaces in visible areas.
3) ZEISS doesn’t plan to be manufacturer, so other companies can use the tech
So you can't just stick on any existing window or pane of glass? That's good.
> The Holocam technology "uses holographic in-coupling, light guiding and de-coupling elements to redirect the incoming light of a transparent medium to a hidden image sensor."
That suggests, at least to me, that you'll need something more than just a simple sheet of glass. There's probably some engineering required to allow light to be guided and redirected towards what sounds like a typical camera sensor.
---
> Glass surfaces can also generate energy. The microoptical layer in the window pane absorbs incident sunlight and transmits it in concentrated form to a solar cell. This combines the advantages of conventional windows – natural light and an unrestricted view – with the additional benefit of efficient energy production.
what? holy shit?
> coupling, decoupling and light guiding elements to divert incident light to a concealed sensor
So, there's a camera in the dash looking up at the windshield and focusing where it expects to see a face, thereby using the windshield as a reflector? And maybe there's some additional etching and deposited films in the windshield to support the angles required?
And perhaps you can put cameras elsewhere, and similarly subtly modify the windshield or other glass to look at other things as well?
Huh. Seems like it should be fairly easy to find info on then... though some googling around makes me think they might just be referring to their more general diffraction gratings and whatnot.
Product page: https://www.zeiss.com/oem-solutions/products-solutions/multi...
NASA/ESA mention: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zeiss_automotive-augmentedrea...
Second, #3 is always a red flag for me. It is sometimes code for "we can do this in the lab but we have no idea how one would manufacture it." A similar analogy is "we've got this great idea for a program you can license but no one here knows how to actually code it up."
Third, the impact of this going mainstream would be hard to underestimate. All those people working on transparent displays like they do in sci-fi movies? Yup they could do that. A video conference system with solid eye contact (mentioned in a couple of places) sure you could do that too. A mirror that could show you wearing different clothes? Yup I could see how that would be coded.
That #3 though. That is what tempers my enthusiasm. Did I miss any announcement that they had a display at CES? (or was it just an announcement) If the former I would seriously consider flying over to Vegas to check this out.
Does Zeiss manufacture any public facing camera currently ? All their general public facing projects are collaborations with Sony or Vivo or other makers, and I think they only manufacture lenses, so nothing with a high quality chip in it.
It's probably another story on the medical side, but this doesn't fit a highly specialized, peofessional only niche with a PC doing the processor on the side.
Deleted Comment
The principal issue will be gathering enough energy. A well lit source like a bathroom mirror (mirror behind the light guide) could work pretty well I'd wager. If the light guide is too efficient then it will appear opaque, so there is a trade-off.
I find "turns any window" pretty misleading. Unless I'm missing something this needs very special glass or at the very least a special coating/laminate.
For folks worried about privacy, it will almost always be more convenient and cost-effective to install a tiny spy camera somewhere.
Zeiss isn't going to aspire to sell cheap glass on razor thin margins.
Especially true since Zeiss isn't planning on selling these at all. They're selling licenses to the tech.
I doubt that undermines your privacy argument in any meaningful way however. Even if the license was free, the cost of producing the components is certainly magnitudes higher compared to the cost of current tech that accomplishes similar goals.
https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publicati...
https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedg...
Beamforming in RF frequencies is old, beamforming at optical wavelengths is pretty new shit. Doing the reverse, that is receiving a signal, is brand spanking new fresh out the cow hot shit at any frequency.
Projector light engines include potentially many light-beam forming condensing and projection lenses precisely to concentrate light into a uniform quadrilateral. That's not new. The industry continues to advance, though.
Even holographic projection isn't new. This is just that, except the light is (sort of) taking the reverse path.
Technically there is no reason why it can't also project light outwards simultaneously. However light guides aren't really reversible like that: the light usually exits through a small fraction of the guide's external surface area. Reversing that means the entire external surface area is potentially collecting light, which would result in some undesirable caustics in all scenarios I can imagine. Light engines are in part designed to account for this (by reflecting or sinking light into an absorber) but this is still pretty different from what Zeiss is promoting.
For a small permanent installation where you are in control of the lighting I could see this working relatively well, but I have a hard time imagining you could get close anything resembling photo quality without a lot of environmental treatment. Conversely holographic projection is pretty doable on a mobile platform like a headset.
This is pretty new only in that it's probably at least an order of magnitude more difficult to accomplish and thus hasn't been viable up until now. Fundamentally none of the concepts are new, as far as I can tell.
As an example look at your nearest window and imagine it divided into a grid of uniform pixels. Each pixel is a small mirror that reflects a point of focus (wherever you are) to a another, smaller point on an imaging sensor somewhere in the frame. This would look pretty jarring (and jagged) to most people, until you layer a complimentary piece of glass on top of it to make the exterior flush. The two pieces of glass would be high enough precision that once you put them together they are effectively one piece of glass. Ta da.
This is effectively the same process as making any other multi-lensed glass, and that's Zeiss's wheelhouse.
I lit (pun) came to gripe about light pipes...
However here is you solution:
3D print lenses in a header for threads to be arbitrarily placed in a [COMPOUND] lens and pull that feed with AI spatial mapping (yes these are easy now)... EYE
And you can make these in many increments - micro even... "Hey NSa, super simple optical prince Rupert drops on a composite eye" (self destrucing fiber lens when discovered)
why not?
As a side hustle, why don’t you start building and selling desktop PC’s to local businesses, competing with HP, Dell, etc on margin? That’s also tech, right?
While building cheap PCs at razor thin margins is adjacent to whatever your tech job is, and probably something you’re able to do, it probably wouldn’t be the most profitable use of your time
There’s a facility across from the Autobahn that was so sensitive trucks going by would throw off their machines. They had to put padding on the autobahn to prevent it. This was after they put the foundation on some kind of suspension. My coworker said they hire the most PHDs in Europe.
While there are some really interesting potential applications for this tech, it is also more than a little disconcerting.
The ubiquity of camera phones and the emergence of tech like those Meta glasses is already pushing us to disconcerting (albeit interesting and in some cases very useful) places, but some of these cutting edge concepts worry me. WiFi seeing through walls also comes to mind…
People didn't like that Google Glass could always be filming, now we don't even have a physical camera.
Rayban/Meta (I believe) have a sensor to detect that the wearer has not attempted to cover the light which shows that the camera is in use, but how will that work when every piece of glass is a camera.
The total lack of any deeper information beyond the bold yet vague claims in the press release is frustrating. The PR makes it sound like a miraculous breakthrough destined to change everything. The source release on the Zeiss site only adds two bits of info.
> "The transparency of the holographic layer has only a minimal effect on the brilliance of the image reproduction. It is also possible to detect spectral components as additional information to complement the visible image. The resulting data provide insights into environmental contamination such as air pollution and UV exposure."
However, experience shows that in reality bold+vague claims like this inevitably come with significant trade-offs and constraints which limit its applications (little things like cost, power, fidelity, size, speed, etc). This is especially true in early implementations of new tech. That said, it may still be both interesting and useful. Unfortunately, we have no way to even think about how it might be useful because Zeiss marketing has chosen to play 'hide the ball' instead of just releasing a technical explainer outlining relevant trade-offs, limitations, etc.
If I was talking to someone from Zeiss my first questions would be about how much the additional components impact the optical characteristics of the glass, what the resolution of the resulting image data is, how large are the components needed at the edges and how far away can they be from the capture zone? Then, of course, how the output of the resulting imaging system maps into traditional camera/lens metrics like f-stops, aperture, imager size/density, gain, focal length, etc. Zeiss is an optics company after all.
The paper mentioned in the Description section can be read here: https://www.academia.edu/52566311/_title_Volume_phase_hologr...
My guess is that each of the items in patent diagram labeled 20 and 22 are gratings of this sort, perhaps with the fringes angled at 45 degrees.
Some additional info may be gleaned from the one patent citing this one, invented by one of the co-inventors of the latter: https://patents.google.com/patent/DE102019206354A1/en
Deleted Comment
This is pretty cool.