Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | July 31, 2019 | AIM, the trusted worldwide industry association for the automatic identification industry, providing unbiased information, educational resources and standards for nearly half a century, has announced the ratification and release of the revised International Symbology Specification – DotCode.

DotCode, introduced in 2009, is a unique, variable size, variable shape, matrix (2-D) symbology specifically designed for high-speed marking applications where alignment or connection of individual dots is problematic. Because DotCode decoding does not rely on finding continuous lines, DotCode offers a practical method to provide unique item identification at full production line speeds. The revised (version 4.0) DotCode specification defines expanded symbology-specific print quality assessment (verification) parameters based on a more granular (1/10 of a point) scale. Most importantly, the new specification defines a revised encoding algorithm to prevent rare but significantly flawed dot patterns that could have been produced under the original DotCode encoder.

George Wright, IV, a member of AIM’s Technical Symbology Committee and lead for the project, shared this comment on the relevance of the release, “This fundamental enhancement to DotCode defines a significant encoding improvement based on extensive new testing of the original encoder algorithm and real-world experience in printing and reading DotCode in anti-counterfeit and traceability implementations in the European tobacco industry over the past several years.”  A podcast interview with Mr. Wright on DotCode is available here.
​
The revised DotCode specification (Rev. 4.0) and associated encoding and mask scoring source code files are available for purchase from the AIM Store & Knowledge Resource Center.

For more information, contact AIM Headquarters via email (info@aimglobal.org) or phone (+1.724.742.4470). 

 RFID: Progress, Trends & Where Next | Raghu Das, IDTechEx
 Monday, July 22 | Noon ET 
​
This webinar from analysts IDTechEx will provide an overview of the current state of the RFID industry, with detailed analysis of NFC and RFID markets and their medium term opportunity. Key applications driving growth will be covered. The webinar will also look at the increasing range of RFID sensors becoming available and the radical change in the active RFID segment.

Recording is available upon request.