"X-ray vision" that can track people's movements through walls
using radio signals could be the future of smart homes, gaming and health care,
researchers say.
A new system built by computer scientists at MIT can beam out radio waves
that bounce off the human body. Receivers then pick up the reflections, which
are processed by computer algorithms to map people’s movements in real time,
they added.
Unlike other motion-tracking devices, however, the new system takes
advantage of the fact that radio signals with short wavelengths can travel
through walls. This allowed the system, dubbed RF-Capture, to identify 15
different people through a wall with nearly 90 percent accuracy, the
researchers said. The RF-Capture system could even track their movements to
within 0.8 inches (2 centimeters).
Researchers say this technology could have applications as varied as
gesture-controlled gaming devices that rival Microsoft's Kinect system, motion
capture for special effects in movies, or even the monitoring of hospital
patients' vital signs.
The team, led by Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and
computer science at MIT, has been developing wireless tracking technologies for
a number of years. In 2013, the researchers used Wi-Fi signals to detect humans
through walls and track the direction of their movement.
"These [radio waves used by RF-Capture] produce a much weaker signal,
but we can extract far more information from them because they are structured
specifically to make this possible," Adib told Live Science.
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