Fujitsu Creates System to Embed Data in RGB Light

Fujitsu Laboratories has created a new technology that allows them to send data through LED light, or any other light source with a variable RGB scale for that matter, while maintaining the same visual light.

The new method can include ID data in the light that can then be picked up by a cellphone and interpreted by an app. This in return can then load and open more information about on object from a centralized server, effectively allowing non-connected objects to be part of the Internet of Things.

“The concept of Internet of Things is important right now, but I don’t believe that everything can be connected to the Internet,” said Akira Nakagawa, director of the Image System Lab at Fujitsu Laboratories. “But this system allows objects to be virtually connected. That was our motivation in developing it.”

Fujitsu demonstrated the modular RGB method during a press conference in Tokyo on Monday where a staffer pointed a smartphone camera at a small mannequin and a traditional Japanese woodblock print, both illuminated with LEDs. The special app on the smartphone then processed the image data and extracted the ID to instantly show the product information about the two objects.

This could come in very handy in museums and galleries for example, but also in retail where you could point to buy with just a few user interactions, or just get more information about any object that has its own lighting setup. It’s a very cost-effective way to provide your customers or visitors with all the information they could desire about an object. It could even be used during live performances of artists, allowing anyone that points their cellphone at the performer to purchase whatever song he’s just performing, or again, just get more information about it. There are almost endless options for this technology.

Fujitsu is testing the technology in various applications to improve its accuracy and aims to commercialize it during its fiscal 2015, which ends March 31, 2016. The LED system will be shown off on Wednesday and Thursday this week at the Fujitsu Forum 2014 in Munich, Germany.

Thanks to PCworld for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of PCworld