Engineers see things in their own perspective—always with a touch of tech in them.
When it was time to create a Pookkalam for Natana’s Orumayode Onam Pookkalam competition held on 2 September 2019 at Technopark, engineers at Mettle Networks thought of creating one with a difference as a form of self expression—they created world’s first, fully floral, interactive Pookkalam (flower carpet) .
When looked at it first, it appeared to be a different kind of layout and design. It didn’t confirm to what traditionally Malayalees consider a Pookkalam. It has a different shape. Different patterns. It would take a while to understand its beauty and ingenuity.
What is So special About this Flower Carpet?
This Pookkalam, though it is made fully of flower petals and laid on the floor, if you try to take a photo of this Pookkalam, your phone will recognize something in it and it will respond! Yes! Before you even take its photo, your phone will tell you that the Pookkalam is suggesting you visit a website! If you proceed, you will be taken to an Onam greetings page on Mettle Networks’ web site where you could enter an Onam Lucky-draw!
How is it done?
This Pookkalam has digital data encoded in it that mobile phones will understand and respond without any special command or third-party app. The technology used is same as that of QR code. QR code has a square geometry but it looks a bit different from a regular QR code in its shape. It looks more like a trapezoid. Because it has to undergo an optical correction called inverse perspective to make it work in this case.
This Pookkalam has digital data encoded in it that mobile phones will understand and respond without any special command or third-party app. The technology used is same as that of QR code. QR code has a square geometry but this Pookkalam looks a bit different from a regular QR code in its shape. It looks more like a trapezoid. This is because it has to undergo an optical correction called reverse perspective to make it work in this case.
Interested to know more about this? Please watch out this space.