A research team at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States is developing an augmented reality application that displays device-related information using LED lights mounted on various devices. With an app called LightAnchors, lines representing annotations on the device appear on the smartphone screen. For example, if it is a credit card payment device, the amount of payment will come up, the building name and opening time can be displayed in an external light, a power strip can indicate power status in use through a glowing switch, and a temperature alarm can indicate battery life.
Once the information is read, the augmented reality information does not shake even if the smartphone is moved. All you need to see the AR is to encrypt binary data that actually flashes at super fast speeds with LED lights. The app is a structure that decodes this flicker.
On the official site, the advantage of Light Anchor is that it does not require an external device and only needs a high-speed camera that is equipped with a recent smartphone. The app can be used standalone because it holds vast amounts of data even without using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and not connected to the cloud. Products that are already in the world are said to be able to be read by apps through firmware updates because the built-in microprocessor controls the LED.
In the demo video, you can determine whether the vehicle you are going to ride from the front light of the car used for vehicle sharing, adjust the air conditioner temperature on the smartphone screen, or turn on or off the lighting of IoT appliances. Light Anchor will be released as an app for iOS soon. It is not known how much the device is recognized at this stage, but it can be a useful example of augmented reality in real life. Related information can be found here .