The solution that the team has come up with, for now, is to rely on joints, which are ubiquitous in wooden objects made out of more than one component. A key question that had to be resolved was this: How can information be stored in a way that is unobtrusive and durable, as compared to externally-attached bar codes and QR codes, and also will not undermine an object’s structural integrity? In their initial demonstrations of the idea, the MIT-led team decided to construct their objects out of wood, making pieces such as furniture, picture frames, flowerpots, or toys that are well suited to laser-cut fabrication. Information can be extracted from these objects, moreover, with the RGB cameras that are commonly found in smartphones the ability to operate in the infrared range of the spectrum is not required. StructCode, at least in its original version, relies on objects produced with laser-cutting techniques that can be manufactured within minutes, rather than the hours it might take on a 3D printer. Moreover, the method for fabricating these objects and affixing the tags to their surfaces relied on 3D printers, which tend to be very slow and often can only make objects that are small. The drawback there was that many cameras cannot perceive infrared light. In last year’s approach, “invisible” tags - that can only be seen with cameras capable of detecting infrared light - were used to reveal information about physical objects. That work, as well as the current project, was carried out in the laboratory of MIT Associate Professor Stefanie Mueller - Doğan’s advisor, who has taken part in both projects. StructCode grew out of an effort called InfraredTags, which Doğan and other colleagues introduced in 2022. “The goal is to change the way we interact with objects” - to make those interactions more meaningful and more meaning-laden - “by embedding information into objects in ways that can be readily accessed.” That, in a nutshell, is “the high-level idea behind StructCode,” explains Doğan, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and an affiliate of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Not the “faster than a speeding bullet” and “more powerful than a locomotive” version, but a Superman, or Superwoman, who sees the world differently from ordinary mortals - someone who can look around a room and glean all kinds of information about ordinary objects that is not apparent to people with less penetrating faculties.
To get a sense of what StructCode is all about, says Mustafa Doğa Doğan, think of Superman.
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