Bye-bye barcodes?

Mary Bruno

Mary Bruno Jul 5, 2025

Feb 6, 2018

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                <h1>Bye-bye barcodes?</h1>
                <h2><p>Frometh the Geekwire cometh news of a collaboration between Microsoft and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. The result: InfraStructs. Think invisible barcodes buried inside everyday objects during the fabrication process. The codes are read by scanners that operate in the largely ignored (‘til now) “terahertz” sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum.</p></h2>
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               <p>By <a href="/author/mary-bruno-crosscut-com/">Mary Bruno</a></p> 
              <p><time datetime="2025-02-04T05:00:00-08:00">Feb 6, 2018</time></p>
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            <p>Frometh the <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2013/seethrough-scanning-microsoft-researchers-show-terahertz-imaging-reveal-hidden-tags/?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">Geekwire</a> cometh news of a collaboration between Microsoft and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. The result: <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2461912.2461936&ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">InfraStructs</a>. Think invisible barcodes buried inside everyday objects during the fabrication process. The codes are read by scanners that operate in the largely ignored (‘til now) “terahertz” sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. (That’s the mid region part, somewhere between microwaves and infrared light.) Merging InfraStructs technology and 3D printing, say InfraStructs' inventors, promises to make life better for inventory managers and video gamers everywhere, not to mention those soon-to-be ubiquitous household robots that can use the tags to tell the difference between the TV and the fridge. And terahertz radiation is safe. (We hope.) InfraStructs will open up “new possibilities for encoding hidden information,” write research partners Karl Willis (Carnegie Mellon) and Andy Wilson (Microsoft). Just what we need.</p>
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Frometh the Geekwire cometh news of a collaboration between Microsoft and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. The result: InfraStructs. Think invisible barcodes buried inside everyday objects during the fabrication process. The codes are read by scanners that operate in the largely ignored (‘til now) “terahertz” sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. (That’s the mid region part, somewhere between microwaves and infrared light.) Merging InfraStructs technology and 3D printing, say InfraStructs' inventors, promises to make life better for inventory managers and video gamers everywhere, not to mention those soon-to-be ubiquitous household robots that can use the tags to tell the difference between the TV and the fridge. And terahertz radiation is safe. (We hope.) InfraStructs will open up “new possibilities for encoding hidden information,” write research partners Karl Willis (Carnegie Mellon) and Andy Wilson (Microsoft). Just what we need.

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By Mary Bruno

Mary was Crosscut's Editor-in-Chief and Interim Publisher. In more than 25 years as a journalist, she has worked as a writer, editor and editorial director for a variety of print and web publications,