AirCode: Unobtrusive Physical Tags for Digital Fabrication

TL;DR

AirCode introduces unobtrusive, fabricatable air pocket tags beneath object surfaces that encode information detectable through computational imaging, enabling metadata embedding and object interaction enhancements.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel method for embedding hidden tags in physical objects using air pockets during fabrication, combined with automated design and robust decoding algorithms.

Findings

Successfully embedded tags detectable via imaging

Enabled metadata embedding and object interaction cues

Demonstrated applications in robotics and object recognition

Abstract

We present AirCode, a technique that allows the user to tag physically fabricated objects with given information. An AirCode tag consists of a group of carefully designed air pockets placed beneath the object surface. These air pockets are easily produced during the fabrication process of the object, without any additional material or postprocessing. Meanwhile, the air pockets affect only the scattering light transport under the surface, and thus are hard to notice to our naked eyes. But, by using a computational imaging method, the tags become detectable. We present a tool that automates the design of air pockets for the user to encode information. AirCode system also allows the user to retrieve the information from captured images via a robust decoding algorithm. We demonstrate our tagging technique with applications for metadata embedding, robotic grasping, as well as conveying object affordances.