MIT’s New Bar Code

MICHAEL GARRY

The latest spin on bar coding is a tiny optical tag cooked up by the MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Mass., called the bokode.

With a diameter of only three millimeters — about the size of the @ symbol on a typical keyboard — the bokode information can be captured by an ordinary camera positioned several meters away. And it holds far more data than a conventional bar code.

Oddly, the information in the bokode is determined by decoding an out-of-focus photo taken by a camera.

In a grocery setting, the bokode could contain a product’s nutrition information and “allow easy product comparisons because several items near each other on the shelves could all be scanned at once,” according to MIT News.

Prototypes of the bokode cost about $5 each, but could drop to 5 cents when produced in small volumes, said MIT News.

The bokode offers “some interesting technological features in terms of information capacity, ability to read long distance and interaction with mobile phones,” said Jon Mellor, spokesman for GS1 US, which manages UPC bar codes in the U.S. “On the down side, the bokode is currently very expensive to produce; can’t be printed on packaging; requires a direct line of sight in order to be read (vs. RFID); and has performance figures, read rates and accuracy levels well below those of current technologies.

“So, bokode is an interesting development and may have niche applications, but it has a number of obstacles to overcome before it could be viable in the commercial world.”