MIT Develops Accurate System For Tracking People, Objects Via WiFi (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has created a new system called Chronos that can accurately detect the position of electronic devices in a room -- as well as the users who are carrying them -- within tens of centimeters using Wi-Fi signals only. "Chronos works without the aid of any secondary sensors, only using a technology called time-of-flight calculation, which measures the time it takes data to travel from the WiFi access point to the user's device," according to an article on Softpedia, citing a paper (PDF) that the researchers presented at a USENIX symposium in March. "MIT researchers say that by multiplying the time-in-flight value they receive from each user with the speed of light, they were able to detect each user's distance to the central Wi-Fi access point."

Comments

Urgh

[solidraven]

The only reason they get to call this an invention is because they're MIT... Phase detection/time of flight using multiple frequencies is nothing new; main limitation is the shitty clock most things have. Combined with the fact that you need fairly good signal chain components to do it properly. This system will still fuck up I'd guess when large metal objects come in play.