Enabling smart vision with metasurfaces

Optical metasurfaces—subwavelength-patterned surfaces that interact strongly with light—have been an active area of research for more than a decade. The field has been driven by the key advantages of this concept, including the ultimate miniaturization of optical elements, empowering novel functionalities that process hidden modalities of light, and the opportunity to tune their properties on demand. A large number of applications with a focus on smart vision have emerged, foreseeing a meta-optical device under the hood of any robotic system. Nowadays, the field is experiencing a solid industry pull that defines the challenges and research directions. This review overviews the application focus of the field defined by the growing number of optical functionalities. We describe the current challenges and outline the research frontiers in the field.