Since barcodes are the sign of the devil (must be true, we read it on the interwebs) it's no surprise that everyone wants to replace 'em.
QR codes have been quite popular, allowing people and companies to tag their stuff with colorful decals filled with bits and bytes, and of course
RFID tags are still going strong, but a team of researchers at MIT has come up with something better: Bokode. It's effectively a tiny little retroreflective holograph that is just 3mm wide but, when a camera focused to infinity sweeps across it, the Bokodes become clear and appear much larger, captured in the video below. In this way they can contain "thousands of bits" of data and, interestingly, show positional information too, meaning the camera knows where in 3D space it is in relation to the tag. This, of course, has hundreds of potential applications ranging from grocery shopping to
augmented reality, and should lead to new and exciting ways for scholars to interpret/misinterpret Revelations.
[Via
BBC]
posted Jul 28th 2009 9:24AM
I'd like to buy Bok Choy with this Bokode
For Bak Choy, go look for Mr Ban @UN. Ask for a deal, tell him you like Kofi.
I'm patenting zebra striping on charts/tables!
Just a friendly FYI - it's the Book of Revelation, not Revelations. Barcodes are referenced in Chapter 3.
I googled that little phrase and it seems someone is plagiarizing.
http://www.shouldbefree.net/2009/07/mits-bokode-tech-calls-out-zebra-stripes-qr-codes-for-battle-of-barcode-supremacy/
Oh, and I totally made up the Chapter 3 part. I don't want to start a holy war here.
Actually, in the book of Revelations, chapter 3 covers RFID. It's in the striptures of Matthews, chapter 12, that you find Barcodes.
Touché, Ryan. Touché.
So now instead of the relatively free printing of a upc code, we will have to pay an extra .03 cents or so for a can of beans with a custom hologram that doesn't add any useful data for the store. Nothing like technology to force us to overthink everything. Your grocery bill just had an unnecessary increase of 2%.
I doubt they'd change barcodes to bokcodes for groceries...
Ordinary calculators didn't get upgraded to OLED screens
@ice
Never under estimate the power of big business. These will be implemented just for the sole sake of making money, whether they are useful or not.
Dude, cut it out! Your cynicism is giving poop a bad name.
Hey ice, great analogy buddy. I think that's exactly the case here as well.
"Sweet Greggo" is an awesome euphemism for poop. One I plan to start using daily!
Example!
"Man, I just spread some sweet greggo all up in there, you might want to let it air out."
Calculators started with LED displays, they were replaced with LCD because the LED displays ate batteries like mad.
Not OLED though, and your point is good and well made, I'm just struck by the thought that many people, even those on engadget. probably don't know calculators were originally using LED numbers
Like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/LED_DISP.JPG
They look better than LCD even though they are 'ancient' technology, it's just a pity that it's LCD's that are the low-power devices.
Dude, it'll include an entire monologue on the life of your product.
"This milk was produced by Bessie, coded C-454 at the Cherry Hills Dairy in Kansas. She enjoyed buttercups, but rarely ever got the chance to eat them and had to put up with lesser grasses. She was tended to by a lonely named Sarah, whose youthful zest for the world had abandoned her in the monotonous conditions of the dairy. She consigned herself to the boredom the dairy and began to look dead behind the eyes as she attempted to COST $2.74"
You assume big business is going to want these. I am going to contest that. I dont think grocery stores will want it, its generally unnecessary for store tagging. The only real use is the one they show in the video, perspective and orientation fixing. Store tagging will go the way of RFID, as it doesnt require line of sight or power to use.
Really, stores are far more interested in RFID. You don't need to actually see the codes to be able to read RFID, just wave a scanner over a shelf and you can get a count of stock. Makes doing inventory (I've done it, as have my parents, it really sucks have to count everything and it takes a damn long time) a much quicker, cheaper process. I think the augmented reality or say, a cellphone reader like they have with codes in Japan is a much better use.
.
(that's a Bokode)
Your bokode says I have to kill.
•
My Bokode wins. (Get a !)
●
AAAAAAA!!!
oh yeah this is gonna be great. I can imagine myself standing in the checkout line watching the clerk search for a tiny red dot to scan on all my items now. It's like where's waldo for checkout clerks.
I'd like to see that cashier try to read off the code and type it in by hand when the scanner fails to focus on that tiny dot.
seems a lot less convenient to me, so when i want to make a barcode i need to purchase a bulk order of tiny holgrams instead of just printing one qr or stripe code with my printer
Separate tiny retroflective holograph or a simple image that can be printed along with everything else on the label? Gee, tough one.
But would you rather have http://tr.im/uptp or a hologram of Princess Leia Organa?
Anyone who scanned the barcodes say I
I
You mean 'aye' . . . but who's counting?
Revelation not Revelations
I think that for some products this will make sense, though I'm more interested in the non-traditional applications for it.
MIT is like a design school that actually comes out with useful things rather then chairs and MAYA renderings of "concepts" (ya that ones the designer has no idea how would ever work)
I wish i woulda went there :-p
Question 1, does that bokode dot have to be powered or illuminated? Yes you can use a flat battery hidden if so, but what if a malfunction occurs? Question 2, do you REALLLLLLLLLY want to search 10 minutes for the "new" barkode dot on your massive xmas gift? Yea thought so
The bokode is not lit up. The highly reflective material thats used on the bokode makes it appear really bright on digital cameras.
Huh, yes it is lit, they say they cn also use reflective for use with a flash, showing that for non-flash use it needs to be lit.
And I don't know why people think it would be used for groceries, that's just a silly concept, if they wanted to spend so much on a new system fro grceries they'd probably pick RFIDs
But it is an interesting concept, and the 3d position thing is an unique angle and I see someone making something useful with that.
so would it be possible to have one code show up when lit with only ambient light, and a whole other code show when a camera flash is used???
that would be even more freaking awesome
Some of you guys sound like ignorant assholes. This has a bunch more uses other than being product UPCs. And it's a tiny printed dot? Even with the reflective material and all that it's not going to cost .03 cents to print each dot. And as far as checkout speeds? They could print a dot on each side of every package, it would actually increase scanning speeds
The creators of this estimated the cost at about $5. It's not in competition with a barcode, which costs far far less. Even an RFID is much cheaper than this. Also, it's not a holograph. Oh yeah, and it uses a little projector system in there, so it is a depth to it, it's not flat like a barcode, so you couldn't just apply it to places which weren't designed for it. For example, they couldn't put a poster up on a subway with one of these, unless the wall was designed with a little pocket to put the projector system in so it doesn't stick out.
And you have to take a special photo (focused at infinity) to make it appear, so why not just print a large barcode in infrared reflective ink instead? It'd be invisible to the naked eye and much cheaper to make.
What the hell where are you getting this?!!?!? You must of read about something else. It's a tiny printed dot, theres no electronics or projectors or anything. It can be printed on any flat surface and read with any digital camera. And a photo focused at infinity is not a special photo, most any camera can do that.
1:17 into the vid, it's a LED (to light it) then a diffuser then a bokode pattern then a tiny lens (or pinhole that acts as a lens)
Watch the video, Luffy, it explains at about 1:10 that the bokode contains a small lens (or a carefully positioned pinhole) to make the light rays exit in a certain way, so that the pattern will be picked up by a camera focused at infinity. Lenses are not flat. Lenses positioned carefully above a highly reflective item It's visibly 3-d in the video as well, looks to be a hemisphere, a shape likely chosen for its strength, to protect the lens contained in the bokode.
The setup they're showing at that point in the video is LED + diffuser + bokode pattern + lens/pinhole ...that's a lot of layers, and you definitely cannot print or lenses, even if you can print LEDs. They do briefly mention something about the possibility of making a version that would be detectable using a camera flash (which might eliminate the need for an LED), but it's definitely not something you can just print on, unlike the 4 alternatives they're showing.
Luffy, I'm saying you have to take a picture specifically designed to expose the bokode. You can't just point your camera at it and take a pic and see it. You have to know there's a bokode, set it up to take an infinity focus pic and then take a pic.
Also, many pictures are taken by cell phones and most cell phones can't focus at all. I wonder how they do on this? They might actually do great since they are fixed focused relatively far away.
All cellphones are basically focussed on infinity, else you'd see everthing blury in the distance, the trouble is that that causes them to be blurry on close shots and that's why all the real, and the twice as abundant faked, leaked shots of products are out of focus you see.
.
I don't think cell phones are focused to infinity. If they were, portraits wouldn't show people in focus. I bet they are focused for something like 40 feet but with a tiny aperture they get tons of depth of field, so things at infinity are in focus.
But it's unclear that for the purposes of bokeh, if having things at infinity be in focus due to deep DOF is the same as actually being focused at infinity. For one thing, if you have a ton of DOF (as phones do), you have very little bokeh to start with, as only things that are out of focus exhibit bokeh.
Of course, if you're only 18 inches away, it'll definitely be out of focus (a good thing in this case), but honestly, if I have to walk that close, they might as well just print a barcode in the corner and let me take a pic of that!
nice
The whole AR thing mentioned is clever... but what will happen when the Bokode is no longer at a proper viewing angle? Their argument that AR tags don't accurately display angle information doesn't hold much water to me since most of the time I see AR tags being used at angles, and the tracking is usually fairly steady. Maybe not Bokode steady, but Bokode doesn't look like it works at anything other than a perpendicular angle.
AR tags also have other benefits over Bokode tracking: one camera, cheap to make, no special equipment necessary (like the Bokode device), does not require near-perpendicular angle to the camera, does not require energy source and therefore greener (or in the case of passive Bokode, does not require use of a flash).
So when you say "that everyone wants to replace 'em", what you really mean is everyone wants to make them stand out less so they can do it covertly.
More room for ads I guess.
The reason that people say barcodes are the sign of the devil is because every barcode printed has the numbers 666 (or so they think). On a barcode every number is represented by a few lines that represent a value. Also every barcode has three guide bars. Many people (mistakenly) think that the guide bars are the exact same symbol as 6. Since every barcode has the three guide bars these people think that every item has the number of the devil on them. I was shown this by someone years ago and thought for a long time that barcodes really have 666 printed on them it was later I learned this was not true. However, I am sure there are many people that think this and keep telling others like I was told convincing them that 666 is printed on every UPC.
On another note. The capability of the bokode to see its angle is really cool.
Currently about as practical as a kick in the head.
Still, it might develop into something interesting just in time to be made irrelevant by the next thing which is more practical.
Because finding barcodes when scanning your stuff isn't hard enougth already?
they could also use bokode for advanced motion tracking and animation overlay because it allow you to calculate the angle in relation to the lens.
Kind of resembles this:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/number%20of%20Fry%252527s%20ass/lazyjay09/FrysAssBBS.jpg
How easy is it to scuff or damage one of these to the point of being illegible? I would think a lot less than it takes to destroy a bar code.
Revelation. No s.
/umm...biblenazi?...
It is, indeed, indistinguishable from magic.