The German company Zeiss demonstrated Holocam technology at CES 2024, which allows you to turn any glass surface into a camera. This could be anything from a car window and laptop screen to the glass of a door in a house.

The innovation promises to radically change the approach to information display, allowing the projection of “holographic” and augmented reality content on transparent surfaces. The technology is based on a thin polymer film that can “transform” glass into a screen on demand for communications.

Holocam technology uses connecting, separating and light-directing elements to redirect incident light to a hidden sensor. This eliminates the need to make holes in the surface to accommodate the sensor, and also makes it possible to place video cameras in the center of the display with minimal impact on the brightness of the reproduced image. The company claims that the film provides transparency of over 92% and combines projection, detection, lighting and filtering functions.

The scope of Holocam is truly limitless. These could be smart doorbells that do not need a separate camera module, web cameras that allow you to look at any point on the screen, face or gesture identifiers on any screen, including for unlocking doors. Other capabilities include floating switches that use gestures or voice commands to activate holographic controls on a flat surface in a car or smart home.

Zeiss does not plan to bring its products to market on its own, but will only act as a supplier of multifunctional smart glass systems to other manufacturers.

However, because the technology makes the camera completely "invisible" in the glass, personal privacy disputes could arise: for example, a window in a rental home could turn into a "surveillance camera" in the future, which is bound to cause concern, observers say.

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