UCLA researchers have developed the world’s fastest barcode scanner, and the benefits for companies and individuals across America are already apparent.
Barcodes are used across the country everywhere from the local supermarket to factories that manage large amounts of inventory, to blood banks that store life-saving information.
The technology that UCLA researcher Keisuke Goda, graduate researcher Kevin K. Tsia and electrical engineering professor Bahram Jalali have developed is about 1,000 times faster than technology that is currently used to scan barcodes.
“Barcode readers are used everywhere,” Goda said. “It’s not helpful for supermarket checkout, but it will be useful in other areas.”
The fastest barcode reader was the result of a natural progression of about 15 years of work, not just an isolated incident, Jalali said.
The barcode scanner market is huge, and the technology is very prevalent, he said.
Barcodes are scanned using two different mechanisms.
In the first, a laser beam scans a black and white pattern and the intensity of the light is reflected, according to a university press release.
The second mechanism to scan
barcodes is like a digital camera that takes a picture of the code and feeds it into a computer.
“We first encoded the barcode into the spectrum of a laser pulse,” said Jalali.
“And then we mapped that spectrum into time.”
The speed of the barcode scanner that the researchers developed will be especially useful in dealing with large volumes of equipment. Barcodes are used for a variety of industrial applications, Tsia said.
“In manufacturers’ product lines, barcodes monitor every single product that move so fast along the lines,” he said.
The rapidity of the new barcode reader will be especially beneficial for blood banks.
The large amount of information that blood banks deal with makes an efficient method to process the information necessary, but safety is always a top priority. Barcodes help make this happen.
“Barcode readers that are networked can collect data to identify blood samples,” said Goda.
“Millions and millions of people donate blood and it can be bad if it’s wrong.”
Jalali said that the barcodes identify the blood samples by the donor and the date it was donated.
Paul Latterman, a second-year bioengineering student, said that what these researchers have done is a huge achievement for UCLA.
“The fact that our engineers and scientists can create something that is 1,000 times better or faster shows what we can do, and the potential for new and better technology is such an accomplishment for UCLA,” Latterman said.
Goda said that the commercialization of this barcode scanner will not only add another accomplishment to UCLA, but could be profitable as well.
The researchers are already talking to one potential manufacturer that has expressed interest in the technology.
Their work is continuing, and Jalali said he expects to see equally exciting discoveries in the future.