Automatic Identification and Data Capture

Automatic identification and data capture is a computer engineering discipline covering the methods and devices that identify objects and capture data about them directly into a computer system without a person typing it in by hand. The field spans optical technologies that read printed symbols, such as barcode and two-dimensional matrix codes, radio-based technologies that read a tag over the air, and other machine-readable formats used across retail, logistics, manufacturing and healthcare. AIDC systems replace manual keyboard entry with a scan or a read, cutting transcription errors and speeding the recording of inventory, shipments and identity at the point of use. The discipline grew alongside the rise of retail point-of-sale systems and supply-chain tracking in the second half of the twentieth century and now underlies everyday transactions from a supermarket checkout to a boarding pass scan.