QR Code Data Type Encoding for Ubiquitous Information Transfer Across Different Platforms

Since the notion of ambient intelligence was proposed in the 90s, many researchers and companies have developed devices, applications and systems based on the idea of an intelligence environment. Despite the obvious benefits of ambient intelligent environments they have not yet been realized in practice. One reason is that systems are developed in isolation according to their particular purposes. In fact, there are many systems that serve similar and overlapping functions in different situations, but these systems cannot be merged into one intelligent system. For example, a museum guiding system allows tourists to borrow handheld devices. The guiding system provides exhibition contents including text, pictures, audio, video, etc. Tourists can therefore experience personalized tours. However, often tourists cannot easily share information with each other when they come across interesting items. In order to help solve the sharing gap problem, we present six information encoding types based on quick response codes (QR Code) that facilitate the connection of independent systems, although they were implemented on different platform such as smart phones or Java phones. Two case studies illustrating the use of these encoding types are presented. The first system is a traveler assistant system where the traveler can share information through QR codes and a ldquoSchedule Coderdquo which provides references to specific sites. The second system, the mobile bird information searching system allows discovered multimedia to be shared across smart phones to Java phones via QR codes.