OAcode: Overall Aesthetic 2D Barcode on Screen

TL;DR

OAcode introduces a novel aesthetic 2D barcode design that eliminates traditional position detection patterns, using symmetrical data areas for detection and an enhanced demodulation method to improve robustness and readability.

Contribution

This paper presents the first overall aesthetic 2D barcode scheme, OAcode, which removes position detection patterns and employs symmetry-based detection and distortion resistance techniques.

Findings

100% detection rate for 5x5 cm OAcode at 10 cm distance

99.5% demodulation accuracy under specified conditions

90% extraction success for 10x10 cm OAcode at 90 cm distance

Abstract

Nowadays, two-dimensional (2D) barcodes have been widely used in various domains. And a series of aesthetic 2D barcode schemes have been proposed to improve the visual quality and readability of 2D barcodes for better integration with marketing materials. Yet we believe that the existing aesthetic 2D barcode schemes are partially aesthetic because they only beautify the data area but retain the position detection patterns with the blackwhite appearance of traditional 2D barcode schemes. Thus, in this paper, we propose the first overall aesthetic 2D barcode scheme, called OAcode, in which the position detection pattern is canceled. Its detection process is based on the pre-designed symmetrical data area of OAcode, whose symmetry could be used as the calibration signal to restore the perspective transformation in the barcode scanning process. Moreover, an enhanced demodulation method is proposed to resist the lens distortion common in the camera-shooting process. The experimental results illustrate that when 5$\times$5 cm OAcode is captured with a resolution of 720$\times$1280 pixels, at the screen-camera distance of 10 cm and the angle less or equal to 25{\deg}, OAcode has 100% detection rate and 99.5% demodulation accuracy. For 10$\times$10 cm OAcode, it could be extracted by consumer-grade mobile phones at a distance of 90 cm with around 90% accuracy.