Wednesday, June 5, 2013
The Wi-Fi in your home can track your moves like Xbox Kinect
Devin Coldewey NBC News
Gestures made in mid-air are tracked by WiSee, a low-cost Wi-Fi-based technology.
Want to switch off the living room lights from bed, change channels while washing dishes, or turn the heat up from the couch? A team at the University of Washington has rigged a standard Wi-Fi home network to detect your movements anywhere in the home and convert them into commands to control connected devices.
Gesture recognition is the latest fad in games and tech, but even the newest systems require high-tech depth-sensing cameras or other special hardware. Microsoft's new Kinect, for instance, uses a photon-measuring method called "time of flight" sensing that was, until the Kinect was announced, limited to high-tech laboratories. And Kinect isn't small, either.
UW computer science students, led by assistant professor Shyam Gollakota, looked at the gesture-detection puzzle another way — specifically, how people affect the environment they're already in.
Our bodies distort the Wi-Fi signals we use to beam information to and from our laptops and phones. By watching those signals very closely, the team could determine not just what room you're in, but where you're standing and how you're moving your body. They call the system WiSee.
"By analyzing the variations of these signals over time, we can enable full-body gestures that go beyond simple hand motions," said Qifan Pu, a visiting student and one of the team at UW, in a video outlining the work.
That's no easy task: the "doppler effect" that our bodies have on the wavelength and path of the Wi-Fi signals is miniscule, meaning reliable measurement with consumer-grade hardware is difficult. But the WiSee team's expertise worked it out.
Once the sensing process was rigged up, the group combined the gesture recognition with store-bought home automation devices that wirelessly control lights, media players, thermostats, etc. Soon, they were using WiSee to perform simple tasks like playing a song or changing channels.
The system is also capable of tracking people as they wander through rooms or out of the house, turning off lights or adjusting music volume depending on their location.
YouTube / University of Washington
The WiSee system senses how Wi-Fi signals bounce off of or pass through people and obstacles on the way from transmitters like laptops.
The team put together a prototype piece of hardware to demonstrate WiSee, but any modern Wi-Fi router should do the trick, too, with a bit of custom software. With no special devices to buy, this could be the cheapest gesture-recognition tech yet.
Don't worry about anyone installing it surreptitiously on your router, though: It takes a bit of expertise and some specific "training" of the software before it can recognize anything at all, much less specific gestures or locations.
PhD student Sidhant Gupta and assistant professor Shwetak Patel, also on the project, have worked with Microsoft Research on similar body-tracking systems, but using soundwaves or radiation from electrical wires as the medium.
WiSee is currently in the proof-of-concept stage, but the creators hope to present it at the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking in Miami later this year.
More information, including a technical description of the system, can be found at the project's website.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
Gestures made in mid-air are tracked by WiSee, a low-cost Wi-Fi-based technology.
Want to switch off the living room lights from bed, change channels while washing dishes, or turn the heat up from the couch? A team at the University of Washington has rigged a standard Wi-Fi home network to detect your movements anywhere in the home and convert them into commands to control connected devices.
Gesture recognition is the latest fad in games and tech, but even the newest systems require high-tech depth-sensing cameras or other special hardware. Microsoft's new Kinect, for instance, uses a photon-measuring method called "time of flight" sensing that was, until the Kinect was announced, limited to high-tech laboratories. And Kinect isn't small, either.
UW computer science students, led by assistant professor Shyam Gollakota, looked at the gesture-detection puzzle another way — specifically, how people affect the environment they're already in.
Our bodies distort the Wi-Fi signals we use to beam information to and from our laptops and phones. By watching those signals very closely, the team could determine not just what room you're in, but where you're standing and how you're moving your body. They call the system WiSee.
"By analyzing the variations of these signals over time, we can enable full-body gestures that go beyond simple hand motions," said Qifan Pu, a visiting student and one of the team at UW, in a video outlining the work.
That's no easy task: the "doppler effect" that our bodies have on the wavelength and path of the Wi-Fi signals is miniscule, meaning reliable measurement with consumer-grade hardware is difficult. But the WiSee team's expertise worked it out.
Once the sensing process was rigged up, the group combined the gesture recognition with store-bought home automation devices that wirelessly control lights, media players, thermostats, etc. Soon, they were using WiSee to perform simple tasks like playing a song or changing channels.
The system is also capable of tracking people as they wander through rooms or out of the house, turning off lights or adjusting music volume depending on their location.
YouTube / University of Washington
The WiSee system senses how Wi-Fi signals bounce off of or pass through people and obstacles on the way from transmitters like laptops.
The team put together a prototype piece of hardware to demonstrate WiSee, but any modern Wi-Fi router should do the trick, too, with a bit of custom software. With no special devices to buy, this could be the cheapest gesture-recognition tech yet.
Don't worry about anyone installing it surreptitiously on your router, though: It takes a bit of expertise and some specific "training" of the software before it can recognize anything at all, much less specific gestures or locations.
PhD student Sidhant Gupta and assistant professor Shwetak Patel, also on the project, have worked with Microsoft Research on similar body-tracking systems, but using soundwaves or radiation from electrical wires as the medium.
WiSee is currently in the proof-of-concept stage, but the creators hope to present it at the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking in Miami later this year.
More information, including a technical description of the system, can be found at the project's website.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
I am a marked man.
Below is my personal profile that has remained since I first crafted it when I started blogging just before the 2012 elections.
Bring it on bitches.
Look at the first two words in my description: Patriot, Tea Party. These are the two main words that the IRS and other Obama Government organs are targeting with their tentacles of hate, intolerance and unethical behavior.
I am Doomed.
ABOUT ME
- Mike Miles
- Patriot, Tea Party member, Individualist, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, Fiscal Conservative, Proud NRA member
Paid Liar Susan Rice is Rewarded With Top Security Adviser Position
After withdrawing from her nomination of Secretary of State because of her lies, Obama picks Susan Rice to lie for him as his security adviser.This is an excellent choice for the Obama Administration given their propensity to be loose with the facts, and to say things that are not consistent with the facts, they could not have found a better choice than someone who already has shown that she can stand in the glare of television cameras and bald face lie to the American public, remain unrepentant, and then continue to lie and cover for the administration. This administration has once again shown their talent for picking liars and scoundrels to continue their fine work of dismantling American freedoms, market economies, most of the constitution and any semblance of integrity.
Don't Let The New Lies Bury The Old Lies
He Is A Lying Liar, Don't Let Him Bury His Old Lies With New Lies.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
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