Martyn: Students at MIT’s media lab are working on Bokodes, a project they hope will be the next generation of common place bar codes. They used a technique that exploits the Boca effect, the name given to the out of focus geometric points of light once used in photographs.
Ramesh: Single point bar codes that we’re in 30 or 40 years ago so that they can be scan with laser scanners in checkout counters or industrial applications, but today, we look at bar codes through cameras, because, you know, a billion people out there have cameras in their pocket. So we thought, you know, it’s the time to upgrade those bar codes as well, so that they’re more compatible with our camera phones, you know, in terms of size and distance and focusing abilities and as well as that, we want to enable a whole new range of applications that are based on new phones bar codes, which we call Bokodes.
Martyn: When cameras try to focus on the bokode pattern, the Boca effect blurs the pattern together to form an image that could be read by a camera, bokodes are printed at an extremely small scale when compared with traditional bar codes. When printed and placed behind a lens to magnify them, bokode prototypes may be read from as far away as 20 meters and contain much more information than typical bar codes.
Ankit: You can read it from a reasonably larger distance for the size of the bokodes, so for a 3 millimeter barcode, you have to be, you would have to be really close to it in order to read it, but a bokode, you can read it from a comfortable distance.
Martyn: To accommodate different types of applications, MIT researchers have come up with two types of bokodes.
Quinn: So an active and a passive, so, in the active bokode, we actually have a small LED in the back which illuminates the bokode, and that way a camera can see it very easily coz it’s very bright. But that may not be good for, say something that, you put on lots of products, because of the expensive sticker. So, we have a passive bokode, in the passive bokode you illuminate it with the flash on your camera and then it illuminates and reflects back out of the bokode.
Martyn: Bar coding is not the only tagging technology commonly used today, RFID, or radio frequency identification tags are also very popular. But Mohan says bokodes offered advantages over RFIDs.
Ankit: With the RFID you get no geometry information, you only know that there is a tag somewhere in the vicinity, it’s very hard to find out where that tag is, you can use triangulation and stuff, but it’s still complicated and you don’t get very accurate information. With the bokode, you get very accurate position and angular information down to .1 degrees with the current prototype.
Martyn: Due to their small size, MIT researchers have also come up with more applications for bokodes than just tagging your cereal box.
Quinn: Well, bokoding your third break light or on your bumper, and the car behind you would know when you’re stopping , how far away you are and how quickly you’re stopping and in which direction you’re, you know, kind of swerving, and so that way your car will know if it’s necessary to emergency apply the brakes or to swerve out of the way in the other direction. You can also have pedestrians where bokodes and in the, and the car would know, not only where other cars are but also pedestrians.
Martyn: There’s no word yet on when bokodes will make their commercial debut, but those working at the MIT media labs say they intend to make them smaller and even more readable by the time they hit the market. Reporting from Boston, I’m Justin Mysinger, IDG News Service.
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