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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."
The last think I want it the system to detect me fapping and turn the tv to CSPAN and turn all the lights on!
Silence is a state of mime.
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...
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...
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.
So... maybe "The Force" or "magic" is just an accumulation of old wifi products?
This feature will not be made available in Italy.
A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
Zaphod waved a hand and the channel switched again.
Branching from an idea from over a decade ago. http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N63/Stealth.63f.html
I'll tell you when you're older, dear.
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.
Ummm... the government already has this technology. It does not need your WiFi. Any radio or TV station does fine as a signal source to illuminate the area with an RF field.
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.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Okay, I'm working on a report on my laptop while watching Sean Hannity. Sean says something annoying, I give him the finger - and then my laptop shuts down without saving my work!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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.
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?)