DENSO receives IEEE Corporate Innovation Award for developing and spreading the use of the QR Code
The DENSO Corporation has received the Corporate Innovation Award from the IEEE*1, the largest international association for electrical and electronic engineering, for developing the QR Code*2 and spreading its global use.
The IEEE Corporate Innovation Award, one of the world’s most prestigious technical awards, is presented to organisations that have made a significant global impact with innovative technologies and products and contributed to the development of electrical and electronic engineering. Established by IEEE in 1985, the award has been presented to leading companies and organisations worldwide and now DENSO has become one of only six Japanese companies to receive the recognition.
The QR Code was developed in 1994 by DENSO’s applied equipment engineering section (currently DENSO WAVE), as an easy-to-read code that can store a large amount of information. The innovative two-dimensional code can store about 200 times more information than barcodes and can be read at high speed. DENSO started to use the code mainly for inventory management at its manufacturing plants, and later made the patent available free of charge, enabling it to spread globally.
In the early 2000s, the QR Code became familiar to the general public in line with the growing use of mobile phones equipped with cameras. Today, it is widely used in many daily applications, including electronic tickets and cashless payments. In 2020, the QR Code was recognised as an IEEE Milestone*3 for its outstanding contribution.
28 years after it was invented, DENSO WAVE continues to develop the QR Code, with the addition of new functions such as SQRC*4, which can carry two types of data (public and private) in a single code, Face Authentication SQRC, that can turn facial feature points into a QR Code, and Frame QR*5, providing design flexibility. The QR Code is contributing to personal identification, prevention of counterfeiting and information falsification, and generation of electronic tickets, demonstrating that DENSO remains committed to developing innovative technologies that contribute to society and industry.
*1 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. is the world's largest engineering academy with more than 400,000 members in more than 160 countries.
*2, 4, and 5 QR Code, SQRC, and Frame QR are registered trademarks of DENSO WAVE Incorporated.
*3 An IEEE Milestone commends an historic achievement, which has greatly assisted the development of society and industry in electrical and electronic engineering https://www.denso.com/global/en/news/newsroom/2020/201007-g01/
Video featuring the QR Code.