Kento Miyaoku, a research engineer of NTT and a visiting researcher at the University of Columbia, developed a technology called C-Blink, which makes mobile phone screen blink with different colors to control external devices (such as a large public display integrated with an image sensor). With this technology, people can for example use mobile phones as a mouse to move pointers on a public display. [video]

[Using a mobile phone as a mouse.]

Identification codes are encoded in the blinking patterns and, for better performance, the system uses a technique called hue-difference-blink.

To enable common mobile terminals to interact with contents shown on large screens, we propose “C-Blink”, a new light signal marker method that uses the color liquid-crystal display of a mobile terminal as a visible light source. We overcome the performance limitations of such displays by developing a hue-difference-blink technique. In combination with a screen-side sensor, we describe a system that detects and receives light signal markers sent by cell phone displays. (source: proceedings of UIST’04)

[Transmitting a photo from a mobile phone.]

Another usage scenario shown in the video is: a user takes a photo using a camera phone, adds some text to it, and transmits it to a colocated large display by showing a blinking phone screen to the display.

Miyaoku recently developed a visual tag system comprised of a multicolor border around any figure, which is called C-Band. C-Band supports “a practical data size and aesthetic design flexibility for enhancing ubiquitous applications using camera-embedded cell phone device.”