Project outline

Since the emergence of cellular telephony in the 1990s, new user functions have steadily been added to cell phones, including SMS, MMS, web browsing, and, more recently, multimedia content. While SMS (Short Message Service) has had a revolutionary impact on our everyday lives, this technology has not yet yielded its full potential. A Montreal-based company LIPSO, which specializes in business SMS applications, has seized the technology opportunity offered by combining SMS and web access. Indeed, the Wap Push method (also a web alert) permits SMS reception linked to an internet address for content downloading of text images or applications.

WAP Push is already in use in many areas and has triggered innovation in the use of bar codes for cellular phones. This new wave in m-business enables high quality paperless information access, high speed and reliable transactions. New-generation bar codes can be used in transportation industries (airlines, railways), computer ticketing, and delivery of discount coupons.

LIPSO’s technology, widely used in arts and culture (Star Académie, Loft Story, etc.), is being adapted to deliver the same high-quality results in the business sector, a large and attractive market. LIPSO has mandated François Gagnon and his team to adapt this technology, making it available to all users. 

Unfortunately, given the wide variety of cellular phones and bar code scanners available on the market as well as the many environments in which they are used, not all mobile phones are compatible with bar code reading technology. The research team is devising a solution to overcome these constraints and make SMS-based bar code reading effective and reliable.

Results to date

• Diversify this technology for other markets and applications
• Ensure flawless end-to-end process
• Develop a method for advance validation of all possible phone-scanner-bar code-environment combinations
• Patent pending – System and method for barcode generation and use
• First deployment of Mobile Check-in in North America for Air Canada and Aéroports de Montréal
• Definition of parameters impacting bar code reading
• Identification of all possible fixed and variable parameters
• Created a method for ensuring success rate of different screen-scanner combinations
• also see Publications and Patents

Our partner

• LIPSO

Team members

Professor: François Gagnon
Specialists: Mathieu Hémon, Olivier Munger, Benoît Châtelain
Students: Korede Ladikpo, Tommy Bouchard, Olivier Alnet, Dany Tremblay, Éric Desailliers
LIPSO team: Vivianne Gravel, Sophie Hennion, Jocelyn Charbonneau, Yann Tomaselli (Francis Beaulieu)

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