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Wi-Fi Signals Allow Gesture Recognition All Through the Home
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."
They use "machine learning" to train the computer to recognize each gesture. You'll have to retrain the computer every time you change position of yourself or any object near you. It's a cute parlor trick, but nothing like what a real radar could do.
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?
Why would they have to force them? If history is anything to go by, your ISP will bake the function voluntarily into their dreadful CPE shit so that they can sell the data for advertising purposes, at which point the feds can just ask them for it...
Few people have an app or web page to control their home appliances, but we're supposed to believe that we want gesture control?
Home automation is nothing new and there are certainly people that *can* control their home lighting and appliances remotely, but few even bother because it's not that useful in practice.
If I forget to turn off the lights when I leave the house, I'm probably not going to remember that the lights are on when I'm at the office and turn them off from there. I'd be better off with a smarter house that turns on the appropriate level of lighting when I walk in a room and turn off all the lights and appliances for me when I leave.
Gesture based music control would probably be more handy than remote lighting control.
According to TFA, this detects *movement* by Doppler shift in the wireless signal - yet it describes it as "similar to Xbox Kinect" but with a bunch of advantages.
However, Kinect doesn't just detect motion - it detects and reports skeletal position regardless of movement. Major differences in potential applications there (especially as the Kinect 2.0 has the resolution to detect finger position/movement as well) - probably not that great for most games.
One thing I can think of that this could be great for - home security. The current crappy IR motion sensors have to have semi-line of sight and (despite what they advertise) are NOT very pet-friendly (especially for large dogs). So, as long as it can tell the difference between a St. Bernard and a guy in a St. Bernard costume...
Any radio ...
The wavelength for radio is kind of large, and while you standing right next to an antenna can have some near field effects, it would be quite difficult to resolve what someone is doing more than a couple wavelengths away.
...or TV station
At least UHF has a more reasonable wavelength, but it would still seem impressive to tell what is going on from outside a house, instead of just that something changed in a particular room. The work discussed in the article here would at least be using shorter wavelengths, with much shorter distances to transmitters and receivers.
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.
Maybe before worrying about a flashy front end, make (or link to...) some thing demonstrating just how doable it is for a random hacker... as making a prettier output should be the easy part, not what is holding up such a project.