HiFi: Hide and Find Digital Content Associated with Physical Objects via Coded Light

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the HiFi which enables users to interact with surrounding physical objects. It uses coded light to encode the position of user’s mobile device in an environment. By attaching a tiny light sensor on a user’s mobile device, the user can attach digital information to arbitrary static physical objects or retrieve/modify the attached information as well. With this system, a family member may attach a digital maintenance schedule to a fish tank or indoor plants so that all family members may retrieve that for maintenance reference. In a store, a store manager may use such a system to attach price tag, discount information and multimedia content to any products and customers can get the attached information by moving their phone close to the focused product. Similarly, a museum can use this system to provide extra information of displayed items to visitors. Different from computer vision based systems, HiFi does not depend on object’s texture and illumination, etc. Different from regular barcode approaches, HiFi does not require extra physical attachments that may change an object’s native appearance. HiFi has much higher spatial resolution for distinguishing close objects or attached parts of the same object. As the HiFi system can track a mobile device at 80 positions per second, it also has much faster response than any above listed system.