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Using Wi-Fi To Count People Through Walls (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Whether you're trying to figure out how many students are attending your lectures or how many evil aliens have taken your Space Force brethren hostage, Wi-Fi can now be used to count them all. The system, created by researchers at UC Santa Barbara, uses a single Wi-Fi router outside of the room to measure attenuation and signal drops. From the release: "The transmitter sends a wireless signal whose received signal strength (RSSI) is measured by the receiver. Using only such received signal power measurements, the receiver estimates how many people are inside the room -- an estimate that closely matches the actual number. It is noteworthy that the researchers do not do any prior measurements or calibration in the area of interest; their approach has only a very short calibration phase that need not be done in the same area." This means that you could simply walk up to a wall and press a button to count, with a high degree of accuracy, how many people are walking around. The system can measure up to 20 people in its current form.
If I use this to spy on my neighbors and find out they're being periodically abducted by the Asgard, should I tell them?
Joking aside, the accuracy is around 2 people, and it can't tell you anything about distribution. So on average, you have no idea if there are people or not. But you can tell a crowded room from an empty room, at least in rooms that if empty would have a normal attenuation pattern.
Pretty weak sauce. Old-school DIY radar on the same frequency is generally more accurate than this.