https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190827101605.htm

The development could lead to intelligent camera systems that figure out what they are seeing simply by the patterns of light that run through a 3D engineered material structure. Their new design takes advantage of the parallelization and scalability of optical-based computational systems.

For example, such systems could be incorporated into self-driving cars or robots, helping them make near-instantaneous decisions faster and using less power than computer-based systems that need additional time to identify an object after it's been seen.