(CSAIL) Researchers Discovered MIT Device ‘RF Capture’

The device works like a specialised kind of Wi-Fi router, transmitting wireless signals and analysing signal reflections as they are directed back to the transmitter.

For example, motion capture used in movies to map actors’ movements to create computer-generated characters, like Andy Serkis’ acting for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, would be possible without the actor having to wear multiple markers and stand in a room full of cameras. The research is a follow-on to technology the researchers previously demonstrated that could help firefighters determine if there are living people in a burning building.

The gadget named “RF-Capture” transmits a wireless signal which gets directed at a body on the opposite side of the wall. While it’s been development for several years now, the researchers say it can now even detect the differences between body shapes and recognize individuals with up to 90% accuracy. But the new device, called RF-Capture, could track their movements even if they’re behind objects or walls.

In the paper the MIT team is calling the technology as RF Capture.RF Capture picks up wireless reflections from the human body.

All the more impressive, the device cannot only make out a person’s chest, arms, and head, but it can also distinguish between two different people and even different types of postures. “You could also imagine it being used to operate your lights and TVs, or to adjust your heating by monitoring where you are in the house”. In contrast to these past systems which abstract the entire human body as a single point and find the overall location of that point through walls, we show how we can reconstruct various human body parts and stitch them together to capture the human figure.

Katabi said they can extract meaningful signals through a series of algorithms they developed that minimize the random noise produced by the reflections. The device emits wireless signals, which travel through the wall, and reflect off different parts of the human body as it moves.

Scientists have created a new device that allows people to see through walls – looks like Superman has competition.

The team is also working on another wireless product called Emerald that would detect, predict and prevent falls among the elderly, which they presented to President Barack Obama during the White House’s first annual Demo Day in August.

“We use the captured human silhouettes from our reconstruction algorithm [to] train a classifier on these silhouettes which allows us to distinguish between people”, Adi told Gizmodo.