Photo: PR Times
tech

QR codes evolve into their newest form: a bar QR code

10 Comments
By SoraNews24

For the longest time we’ve been using UPC bar codes to store strings of information in a compact space on both product labels and people in dystopian sci-fi movies. But as our needs grew and became more advanced, something better was also needed.

And so, in 1994 Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota, developed the QR code as a way to scan larger amounts of information more quickly on product labels or by drones in the sky, with the added benefit of freaking people out.

But familiarity often breeds contempt, and as QR codes became a part of our everyday lives, they began to feel clunky in their own right. In a similar way to the old half-full or half-empty glass of water quandary, a square code could be seen either as a short bar or a fat bar depending how you look at it.

In response to such concerns the Micro QR code was developed, but its compact size came at the price of limited data storage.

Now, Denso Wave feels they have struck a balance between the beefy storage of a QR code with the sleek elegance of a bar code with the rMQR code. It has a layout like a stretched out Micro QR code, but boasts about ten times the data capacity.

For comparison, a standard QR code can hold up to 7,089 numerical digits or 4,296 English letters. A Micro QR code can only contain up to 35 numbers or 21 letters, but a rMQR code ups it to 361 numbers or 219 letters with only a slight increase in size over the Micro QR code.

Screen-Shot-2022-05-28-at-11.31.00.png

The rMQR code format has already been approved by ISO, making them available for widespread use. They can also fit into and onto a number of places where a standard QR code might have problems, such as the border of a picture or curved surface of a vial.

Screen-Shot-2022-05-28-at-11.32.10.png

And so it looks like the classic bar is making a triumphant return to the world of codes. It just goes to show that as the world constantly evolves, so to must the means of data storage and communication advance. It’s still too early to say if this new format will overtake the original QR code, but if it does I will feel really bad for all those people who got one tattooed on themselves.

Source, images: PR Times

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© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

10 Comments
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Poorly written article in some places. Why did the QR code have ‘the added benefit of freaking people out’, for example? Generally informative, though.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

A sora news article where they are really trying hard to sound sophisticated and clever and a little bit rude !

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Another example of extremely cutting edge technology and innovation from Japan, bravo!!!

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Sorry, but that’s of course more an already very old and contributing to jumping over the edge technology. Maybe I should also ‘create’ a squared flower vase and tell, that one can put flowers into it for displaying. No, wait, some round tires are what is needed, aren’t they? lol

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Bar codes are smaller and thinner. Perfect size when it eventually becomes a chip to be injected in our forehead or fingers...

0 ( +2 / -2 )

stick it on your forehead!

0 ( +1 / -1 )

This was difficult for me to understand.

You can get information instantly by reading the QR code.

This technology is groundbreaking, but I wonder how information can be incorporated into it.

If the size of the QR code does not change the data storage, we believe that technology will be created to be able to make information visible by touching some point.

In the future, there may be a society in which people are sorted by QR codes and sorted by numbers rather than by name.It's a terrible thing.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I doubt my current new(ish) model of iPhone can read that q-bar-code, so I guess,... will have to upgrade.

Probably not. Reading QR codes is a software issue, not a hardware issue. If/when these become in common use, Apple will integrate readers with their camera, same as the apple camera reads QR codes automatically now.

I wonder, who is ultimately, behind this change ?

Developers. As technology reaches its limits, developers create new methods, and them push them out for standards. If a standard is achieved, then the new tech becomes adopted by other developers.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The thing is useful but hardly can be called an innovative approach, it does makes easier to fit the code into narrower spaces but in most situations a normal QR or a miniQR is still an option, even if it looks uglier.

The only place I have seen it is necessary is in some automated systems because it gives a lot of flexibility on how to design the robots that will read, classify and sort things.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

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