A novel barcode system for intelligent automation industry

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data that is commonly used in the automation industry. Barcode systems have wide applications involving automatic identification and data capture (AIDC), which includes source tracking, labeling, packaging, pointing the reader to on-line content by means of a uniform resource locator (URL), and so on. Although barcodes are frequently used for encoding information for printed matter, they add unsightly overt content. This paper proposes a novel barcode system, in which a data message is hidden in the printed image, thus requiring no barcode area. In addition, hiding data in images other than barcode areas, e.g. commercial logos, can greatly increase the added values of using barcode systems. In this paper, we first applied the regular screening process to divide the input continuous-tone image into discrete parameter halftone cells. The hidden data message was encoded by the proposed encoding toggles in the halftone cells. To ensure the optimal image quality, a modified direct binary search (DBS) optimization framework was integrated in the proposed system. It ensures that the output data-embedded halftones achieve the best image quality from the viewpoint of human visual system (HVS). The simulation results indicated that the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-art approach in terms of data capacity and image quality.