Graffiti codes let you surf with a wave of your phone

[Nipuna]

The code is on the wall (Image: Pkrzysztof Dydynski/Getty)

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EVERYWHERE you look nowadays there seems to be a QR code. Those are the complicated square patterns that contain links to websites, for example, in a format smartphone cameras can read. Problem is, they need to be printed in advance. What if they could be created on the spot, like graffiti?

That's the aim of a project from Jeremy Rubin, working in the Viral Spaces group under Andrew Lippman at the MIT Media Lab.

Instead of taking a photo of the code, people move their phone over the pattern and Graffiti Codes uses the phone's accelerometers to pick it up. The phone's software recognises the pattern and converts it to code that digitally links to a web page. A pattern can be drawn on any surface with a marker. Anyone can scan the graffiti with their own phone and be pointed to the same information.

Rubin says the hybrid digital-physical tags could eventually be used to offer coupons to shoppers on the move, or even to recognise movement patterns like walking up stairs, triggering a message.

"Graffiti Codes are part of a larger effort to make the world accessible and understandable," Lippman says. "The idea is that it is easily created by anyone and as easily detected. Most other codes are harder to compose and imprint."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Graffiti codes let you surf with a simple wave"