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MIT Is Building a Health-Tracking Sensor That Can See Through Walls (technologyreview.com)
Rachel Metz reports via MIT Technology Review: Imagine a box, similar to a Wi-Fi router, that sits in your home and tracks all kinds of physiological signals as you move from room to room: breathing, heart rate, sleep, gait, and more. Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, built this box in her lab. And in the not-so-distant future, she believes, it will be able to replace the array of expensive, bulky, uncomfortable gear we currently need to get clinical data about the body. Speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Katabi said the box she's been building for the last several years takes advantage of the fact that every time we move -- even if it's just a teeny, tiny bit, such as when we breathe -- we change the electromagnetic field surrounding us.
Her device transmits a low-power wireless signal throughout a space the size of a one- or two-bedroom apartment (even through walls), and the signal reflects off people's bodies. The device then uses machine learning to analyze those reflected signals and extract physiological data. So far, it has been installed in over 200 homes of both healthy people and those with conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, depression, and pulmonary diseases, she said. Katabi cofounded a startup called Emerald Innovations to commercialize the technology and has already made the device available to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for studies.
Her device transmits a low-power wireless signal throughout a space the size of a one- or two-bedroom apartment (even through walls), and the signal reflects off people's bodies. The device then uses machine learning to analyze those reflected signals and extract physiological data. So far, it has been installed in over 200 homes of both healthy people and those with conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, depression, and pulmonary diseases, she said. Katabi cofounded a startup called Emerald Innovations to commercialize the technology and has already made the device available to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for studies.
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Seems like a great device for watching the imprisoned... Who is really asleep, and who is faking it. Sigh...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Tracking our cell locations, scanning our license plates, listening to us in our homes with smart speakers and tv's... and now you want to know what room I'm in and all my vitals all the time? Unless I'm already bed ridden and dying, no. Seriously!
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You can see through walls in a 2 bedroom apartment, and can detect cellular issues in a human body. Yeah, could those iffy whatevers be, I dunno, a dirty shirt hanging off a door knob? Or my sleeping body on the other side of my 42" flatscreen?
One would hope Theranos would be a big enough warning signal, but evidently there are way too many stupid idiots with more money than I'll ever earn in a lifetime. Wish I was smart enough to swindle, err, get them to invest in my company. Which turns empty beer caps into gold. It's patented, but trust me it works. Send me money (I have enough beer caps hanging off my ceiling) and I'll make you rich. Rich I say, Rich beyond your wildest imagination! Just send money. But don't call it beer money.
That is because you keep stupidly expecting it to be used BY you instead of ON or AGAINST you.
"Don't worry," said the government, "this is for your own good. Just trust us this one more time."
I get how the general theory is supposed to work. Also, this idea has me thinking:
We know that radio waves or other electromagnetic waves bounce off surfaces, in a way that an antenna can only barely detect the general direction of a large object. Can a device makes sense of refected electromagnetic waves in order to see high resolution detail? Well, ever heard of a camera - or eyes? Visible light is electromagnetic waves just like radio, only at a different frequency. So in theory there's no reason this wouldn't work THEORETICALLY.
The walls are transparent to the wavelengths involved. Cameras can see through transparent things. So you just need a camera responds to those wavelengths. Infrared cameras are common.
Cameras consist of basically two parts - a large number of light-sensing pixels, and a lens to focus that blurry reflection. Interesting thing is, none of the devices I've heard about have more than one or a few recieve - pixels. You'd expect high resolution would need a bunch of little sensors. I also haven't seen a focusing device serving the same purpose as a lens. Interesting that they are all building a camera that doesn't have either of the two main parts which make up a camera.
Also it seems to me that if this idea really works, using basically Wi-Fi parts, and it has been developed to the point of sensing the tiny motion of breathing, I'm surprised some tinkerer hasn't made a really crude model from a couple of old wireless cards or routers. Something that can detect that big pipe full of water that's inside the wall, behind just one layer of drywall. If the concept works, that's should be a super simple, cheap implementation of the idea. Anyone done that yet? Not that I've seen.
Nothing to see here.
This definitely isn't totalitarian technology. It certainly won't be used by the police-state government we don't have to ramp up the panopticon we don't already live in just a little bit further.
I'm sure the Stasi, the Gestapo, Big Brother Google, and the Department of War have no interest whatsoever in this technology. There's zero chance it will be used for evil. It's totally not true that this tech will be irresistible to a repressive government like we don't have.
In summary, there's nothing to worry about. Move along now.
I have always wanted to let companies and the government to see what I'm doing at all times.
I noticed you're not doing so well lately. Staying in bed long, and your breathing is erratic. So.. will your apartment become available soon?
Hey neighbour, I noticed you have guests over, spend time in bed with them, with elevated heart rate. So.. does your wife know about that?
This is a surveillance nightmare, and researchers should account for that in their work. This 'fundamental science is neutral' stuff often hinders having a good debate. Every single time the positive things get a lot fanfare, while obvious angles of abuse don't.
Nice way to spin a scope that tracks targets through walls.
You seem to imply this is some kind of problem. I'd like the police to know the difference between the victims and the criminals when trying to resolve a hostage situation, even if there is a wall in the way. One thing taught in the Army is that concealment is not always cover, this just adds another dimension to that. I'd rather we figure out how this works before our adversaries do.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
but I think it would be great for sleep studies. The non-sleep I got on that crappy little cot, while I was wired up and had a rubber band around by belly, was in no way representative of a typical night's sleep. I would expect better, more accurate results with less invasive equipment, and this development sounds as though it would help. We might even gain the ability to do sleep studies in the patient's home, resulting in results both more representative of a typical night's sleep, and less disruptive.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Cool. Can it tell me if I've got a woodie? Used to be it was pretty obvious. Nowadays I can't feel nothin. Plus it's as unimpressive hard as soft and hidden below my beerbelly..
Yea, you young pups go ahead and laugh. You'll get here sooner than you think.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.