Barcode Application Innovation for Smartphones

Modern smartphones provide a high sophisticated camera and a high resolution display. Therefore, they can be used to enable various application scenarios for 1D and 2D barcode recognition as well as barcode presentation device. The device positioning against the barcode allows innovative interaction: e.g., additional product information or “rail information” on paper tickets. In the future, the challenges lie on applications that are “easy to use” with one-click: e.g., book auctions with one key press. Beside usability approaches, the technical challenges cover fast and robust algorithms under bad light conditions, different angel orientation and parallax calculation. 1 Motivation – new technology of smartphone cameras Over the recent years, smartphone cameras have reached the level of compact cameras. Manual macro switch or additional lenses were replaced by autofocus systems while the resolution increases. Vendor dependent APIs to access picture or video stream mode are available and the device processor allows real-time calculations which are essential for object detection even under bad light conditions (brightness, colors, reflexes). (a) Shop 1 Shop 2 Shop 3 Shop 6 Shop 4 Shop 5 Mall