Zeiss has unveiled a new kind of technology which looks like ordinary glass or plastic but which means the transparent surface can enable a host of smart applications.

What appears to be standard transparent glass or plastic can now be used in a whole range of different ways, Zeiss said at the product’s launch at the SPIE Photonics West trade fair in San Francisco.

The see-through surfaces, with integrated microstructured optics, support a range of different applications enabling innovations like gesture recognition or eye tracking without any visible optical systems. There are also plans to use the glass in smart homes, said Zeiss, as the new product means glass window panes can assume monitoring tasks both inside and outside the home. The material is also capable of filtering sunlight, measuring the temperature and displaying a host of information, said Zeiss microstructured optics head, Dr Alexandre Gatto. “You can use any size of glass you like with any number of functions. “Smart glass will soon be able to illuminate, identify, filter and project. It’s a fantastic innovation that could be used to do great things in augmented reality and in the automotive industry.”