The 'radar' wi-fi that sees through walls. You acknowledge and understand if you're sick

IN THE FUTURE, what next, the house will recognize you and turn to you lights and heating. As a nurse will understand if you're sick and call for help. Using only the router you use to connect to the Internet.

Another step towards this scenario was done by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a detection system to observe and trace the movements thanks to radio waves such as those of the common wireless router, now present in many homes.

It resembles an x-ray vision, in reality it is a sort of "radar": waves (whose radiation is 1000 times less powerful than that emitted by a standard mobile phone) on the body and bounce back to the source, where it is analyzed to return the image of a person that moves within, for example, of a room of the house.

Silhouettes as fingerprints. The RF Capture developed by scientists of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is an 'eye' that sees through walls, you can distinguish the human profile, follow the movements of the hand and draw them as an electronic whiteboard, but especially observe it while moving in space in three dimensions. According to the study, however, the data obtained from the analysis of the reflected waves are really essential.

The RF Capture then has been 'trained' to recognize different silhouette. Thanks to algorithms developed by MIT, interprets the small differences in the information and compares them with a database of different types of shapes (for example, by inserting the metric data such as height or limb length). This way you can compare different individuals and understand, for example, whether to enter was the landlord, the members of a family or even a complete stranger.

From health to Hollywood. This technology can find various applications, from security and health inside the home to the emergency operations, from home automation to the "gaming" and the movies: "Today the actors should wear strange markers on the body and move special rooms full of cameras, "says Fadel Adi, a researcher and first author of the study," the RF Capture allows you to capture the journey without these sensors and track the movements of the actors even if they are behind furniture or walls. "

But if the special effects of Hollywood seem science fiction, just think of the use applied to a home system. One of the areas where you may have used the new technology is the control device, lighting and heating as well as TV and music: your house recognizes you and you turn to the air conditioner or the stereo when you walk. Or, more importantly, the aspect that concerns health. Think of an elderly person alone in the house. The system can tell when he is in difficulty analyzing its location (for example, if it falls to the ground for an illness) and send an alarm message or call directly for help.

Safety in the home is one of the research fields in which the institution of Massacussetts has made great strides, the same technology of RF Capture is indeed used in another system, Emerald (presented in August at the White House) that recognizes if a person falls in the home and can even monitor your breathing and heart rate at a distance.

Finally the most 'light' but commercially very interesting gaming platforms. A step forward for the development of more and more effective interaction of body movements with video games, without the need for a video camera, interacting even while in another room. To play maybe 'in the dark' (and this could trigger the creativity of programmers to new, innovative gaming solutions) or to fight, shoot or throw through masks or glasses without being in front of the console.