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MIT Researchers Can See Through Walls Using Wi-Fi
itwbennett writes "MIT Professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib have developed a system they call Wi-Vi that uses Wi-Fi signals to visualize moving forms behind walls. How it works: 'Wi-Vi transmits two Wi-Fi signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. When one signal hits a stationary object, the other cancels it out. But because of the way the signals are encoded, they don't cancel each other out for moving objects. That makes the reflections from a moving person visible despite the wall between that person and the Wi-Vi device. Wi-Vi can translate those faint reflections into a real-time display of the person's movements.'"
It's not exactly new either. The only difference here seems to be that the radar signal source is just a low power wifi AP. Yawn.
Headline should have been "MIT Researchers Can Track Movement Behind Walls Using Wi-Fi".
Gimme! Please :)
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
So then I guess we should be looking into ways to prevent government agencies from using this against us. They've already proven to be completely incapable of trustworthiness.
MIT researchers can become wet using water. Seeing through things by using wavelengths that penetrate them isn't particularly new, and one of the selling points with wi-fi is that it can go through walls Non-news for nerds, stuff that natters
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Sweet I can finally watch my neighbors T.V. And to think people used to use WINDOWS! hah! so crude.
I am sure they are using the same frequencies as wi-fi. But wi-fi is not just the use of a certain frequency range.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
What a cop-out! From the article "Like all technologies in the world, it depends on us how we use them," Katabi said.
People use that excuse all the time. However, when one has a reasonable expectation as to how some technology will be used, you cannot fall back on this reasoning to ease one's conscious over their own culbability in something. The scientists involved in the Manhatten project new full well how that technology would be used and had to deal with the moral implications. Today, though, the notion is technology for technology's sake with no thought of the consequences.
Well here's news to all my fellow researchers, if you develop some new technology, great, but don't hide behind your mommy's skirts and say, something like the above. You know darn well how it will be used, so take responsibility for it.
I tried to tell you people those newfangled WiFi thingamagiggies would mutate your DNA, but did you listen?
Now you got mutants at MIT seeing through walls and who knows what else.
It only works well without numerous other wi-fi devices obscuring the signal. They share department space with Robert T. Morris, which explains how they their department gets funding for useless work. (Robert Tappan Morris, the author of the "Morris Worm" that helped effectively take down much of the Internet in 1988, and whose father as head of the NSA helped prevent his serving a day in jail.)
It's where you *hide* MIT computer professors who don't do actually useful work, but you want to keep them around for political reasons.
It can't see you if you don't move.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
We already have enough congestion on 2.412~2.482.Why on earth did they choose Wi-dear lord-Fi?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
...functional Aliens motion tracker???
There's an inconsistency between what we see in the demo and the description. Supposedly the system tracks the angle of the object. Yet what the graph in the video looks like is nothing like the angle. It looks like a simple Doppler output that goes to zero once the subject stops moving.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
High tech ways aren't always better. Heck, the old reliable "dill a hole" in the wall then look through lets one see both moving and non-moving things. Only problem is those being watched sometimes get upset. Suppose that's why the researchers turned to high-tech ?
WiVi meet .... roomba
It's interesting to see how tech progresses. We're starting to get the technology to actually see through or around things and we're also starting to get the technology to make things invisible. Both are mostly in the scientific stages and both have working demos. I hope they make it to the consumer stages at the same time, though I expect seeing through things to be first as it appears to be cheaper and easier than making them invisible.
Wi-Vi can only translate reflections into displays of reflectors' movements. Put the reflectors on a stick, a mobile, a wind-chime or a yo-yo and you can watch the movements of that, while the persons do whatever they want. What you need are infra-red detectors to track the people, until they don Mylar heat reflector suits, when you should be able to track them with your Wi-Vi -- Unless they put overcoats on over their Mylar reflector-suits, when you will only see them when they flash you.
So it would seem that simply sheeting walls with sheets of tin foil would spoil everything.
This research achieves the same and even better (learns and detects multiple states) with an even more interesting approach. http://search.ieice.org/bin/summary.php?id=e95-b_10_3088&category=B&year=2012&lang=E&abst=
by using windows, hehe.