Machine Readable Identification Systems: An Overview

摘要

The application of automated identification of an item by the use of machine readable methods is improving the accuracy and speed of data capture. Bar codes, optical character recognition, magnetic strips, and magnetic-ink recognition are all current machine readable methods which are used for data collection. Bar code data collection is the most used technology for real time inventory control, tracking, and point of sale applications. Magnetic strip coding is used for highly compact data identification on ID cards and on tags. Optical character recognition is generally used today to capture documents for computer storage and recall. Magnetic-ink character recognition, though used widely in banking, has limited applications elsewhere. Bar code methods are currently experiencing a faster rate of growth than the other technologies. Emphasis of this paper is on bar coding because of its popularity. The fundamentals of bar coding are discussed and labeling and scanning techniques are presented. New, automatic data-collection techniques are being developed, utilizing microcircuits and compact-disk memory media. The greatly increased memory capacity of these systems will likely lead to identification in terms of definitive characteristics of the item. (ERA citation 13:002784)