Since the position markers are constant they should be the easiest to recover if damaged. Considering how advanced computer vision is, a QR code can be identified without using them.
Agreed - QR recognition/alignment algorithms can clearly be improved further, and then when they are, higher error correction codes ought to be more reliable as designed.
It's not a case of can they be. It's a case of can they cheaply be.
The camera app on your smartphone likely searches for them by default. That means feeding at least 1-2 frames a second through it.
Basic pattern matching for the position markers is a rounding error overhead vs processing a video feed. Fancy computer vision is not - on lower end devices you may not have enough resources to do both and on higher end devices it'll still impact power usage.
Approximately 10 years ago, I played with an Android app that takes the camera video input, looks for a Sudoku puzzle and then solves it. (AR Sudoku solver)
Detecting a QR code in real time should be possible on all devices by now...
