HCC2D
Project History, Thesis and Papers
The HCC2D color barcode format originates from Marco Querini's Master's thesis in Computer Engineering (Laurea Specialistica in Ingegneria Informatica, A.A. 2009/2010), discussed on July 23, 2010, Analisi e progettazione di codici bidimensionali ad alta capacità. Sviluppo del lettore per gli ambienti desktop e mobile (Analysis and design of high-capacity two-dimensional codes. Development of the reader for desktop and mobile environments). During the thesis, a prototype was built for Android 1.6, in the very early stages of the Android operating system's rollout.
Following the thesis, Marco Querini continued developing the format during his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Automation Engineering (Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica e Ingegneria dell'Automazione).
Conference publications related to this format appeared in September 2010 and September 2013 (respectively, "High capacity colored two dimensional codes" and "Color classifiers for 2D color barcodes"); the journal papers listed below are extended peer-reviewed versions of those conference papers.
During these Ph.D. studies, the name "HCC2D" was introduced in the earlier conference publications and in the following peer-reviewed journal publications, where the format was further described and its properties analyzed:
Querini, M. and Italiano, G. F. (2014). Reliability and Data Density in High Capacity Color Barcodes. Special Issue of the Computer Science and Information Systems (ComSIS) Journal, 11(4), 1595–1615.
View paperQuerini, M., Grillo, A., Lentini, A. and Italiano, G. F. (2011). 2D Color Barcodes for Mobile Phones. Special Issue of the International Journal of Computer Science & Applications (IJCSA), 8(1), 136–155.
View paperA further important contribution to HCC2D was made by Giuseppe Perrupato in his 2013 degree thesis, which helped introduce improvements to the prototype for Android 4.
After more than a decade in which the project remained in the prototyping stage, Marco Querini rewrote it completely using new algorithms and, in his spare time, released the production apps now available on Google Play, the Apple App Store, Huawei AppGallery, and Microsoft Store.