Wi-Fi Signals Allow Gesture Recognition All Through the Home 122
vinces99 writes "Forget to turn off the lights before leaving the apartment? No problem. Just raise your hand, finger-swipe the air and your lights will power down. Want to change the song playing on your music system in the other room? Move your hand to the right and flip through the songs. University of Washington computer scientists have developed gesture-recognition technology that brings this a step closer to reality. They have shown it's possible to use Wi-Fi signals around us to detect specific movements without needing sensors on the human body or cameras. By using an adapted Wi-Fi router and a few wireless devices in the living room, users could control their electronics and household appliances from any room in the home with a simple gesture."
Re:I can't wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that wifi punches through walls reasonably adequately, for most values of 'wall', you wouldn't really have to share a residence with somebody, it would likely work on at least the adjacent houses or apartments if sited correctly.
A vehicle could presumably also scan a building for movement from outside. Possibly even get decent location accuracy with some directional antenna tricks...
Roke Manor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In other news: DOJ demands back doors (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't the DOJ just LOVE this if they could force manufacturers to give them remote access. With a warrant, of course (wink wink!) Is there nothing in a modern house that can't be re-purposed to spy on us anymore?
The DOJ doesn't need access to the lights and appliances in your home to keep track of you when the power company's smart meter will give them nearly the same information. With detailed power usage, they can easily tell when you're at home, when you go to bed, when you wash your clothes, etc.
Re:In other news: DOJ demands back doors (Score:5, Interesting)
I am sure you have noticed if you have ever used a rabbit ear TV antenna that your TV became quite sensitive to where people were in the room. Even changing your position on the bed was quite noticeable if you were trying to receive a weak signal.
By using multiple antennas, triangulation, and signal processing to correlate the signal each antenna received, it is quite do-able to triangulate onto anything moving in the RF field, and determine each moving things position, velocity, direction, and acceleration.
This is quite useful for "seeing" what's on the other side of opaque walls. Light does not make it through the wall, but RF does.
Its a fascinating thing to see these things work. I have a hankering to build a 3D version of one being 3D glasses are becoming available that do not require me to lug around a huge display screen.
Rudimentary ones can be built with little more than the business end of the 10.525 GHz microwave source commonly used for supermarket door sensors. [aliexpress.com]
Hope you can opt out better than with smartphones (Score:4, Interesting)
If my whole house started doing such as a requisite for simply getting bloody internet access, I would officially flip the fark out - sell off everything I own, and move to Costa Rica where I'd spend the rest of my days drinking whiskey from a coconut, while sitting on the beach in Punta Uva. Which really, sounds like a win, but my wife said she won't let me unless I legit go insane...and damnit, she knows.
Sidebars aside, sucks that some companies make their interfaces go such directions. Somewhat like back when it became impossible to find a cell phone which was only a cell phone and had no camera, I fear much will continue going down the route of touch and gestures...things which I, alas, can't do with finesse. (is this where I tell you punk kids to get off my lawn?)