I lived in China for several months and everything was done with the smartphone. THE QR Code they are essential for everything: paying, adding a person on WeChat (a kind of WhatsApp but more extended), booking a ticket online. The walls are covered with codes of this type to allow for various activities. But if we told you that there is also a Invisible QR Code? The invented it MIT of Boston. Let's go see it together.
Have you ever seen an invisible QR Code? Silly question, of course not. Yet it exists: MIT in Boston created it. Here's what it looks like Infared Tags
Scientists of the MIT have created invisible QR Codes which can be applied to any surface. They are clearly read using an infrared camera. With their help, it is possible to classify and store data on various objects. The codes themselves, the ones we are used to seeing in black, are called Infared Tags. They can replace the standard barcodes found on any product, but can be removed over time. Invisible tags are so much more durable because they are integrated into the object itself and are not visible to the human eye.
A special type of plastic, through which infrared light can pass. The "labels" can be printed on one traditional 3D printer. They can be the usual barcodes, QR Codes or ArUco markers. MIT has developed a software user interface that defines how and where a tag on a specific object should appear. You can place multiple tags on the same product to facilitate access to information if viewing from a certain angle is difficult.
What is it for?
In the future, this invisible QR Code technology should allow people to use their smartphones for turn the lights on and off, adjust the volume of the speakers or regulate the temperature in the house. A bit like gods NFC tag from Xiaomi or other companies. Scientists are even developing the possibility of adding IR cameras to augmented reality devices. A typical scenario: we go to the supermarket and see a product. Thanks to AR-equipped devices you can see information on a product, such as calories, weight and so on. The whole, avoiding paper and plastic labels.
There are already products (prototypes) equipped with this technology
At the moment, scientists have made several prototypes of various devices using this technology. They created several cups with barcode with the necessary information, a Wi-Fi router with invisible labels revealing the network name and password and a controller economic wheel-shaped without electronic components. A barcode is simply applied to it: the IR camera reads it and determines the orientation of the controller in space, depending on the direction in which the player turns the wheel.
