CQR codes: Colored quick-response codes

Abstract

This paper proposes a new way to store/transmit information using a Colored QR Code structure. Instead of using only black and white modules, the proposed code is designed to employ 5 different RGB colors (red, green, blue, black and white), which enables twice as much storage capacity compared to traditional binary QR Codes. Reed-Solomon error-correcting code with a theoretical correction capability of 38.41% is also applied. In our experiments, each Colored QR Code in the test set is printed, scanned using a 3.2 megapixel digital camera and decoded. We show that the proposed scheme can consistently decode 1024 bits of information stored on a 1.3 cm × 1.3 cm printed area.