New Wi-Fi Technology Allows Researchers to See Through Walls

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Waterloo have developed new methods for detecting three-dimensional shapes and movements of human bodies in a room using only Wi-Fi routers. The team at Carnegie Mellon used DensePose, a system for mapping all of the pixels on the surface of a human body, to create a deep neural network that maps Wi-Fi signals’ phase and amplitude to coordinates on human bodies. This technology offers an improvement in privacy rights as it does not rely on cameras, and the required equipment can be bought at a reasonable price. The University of Waterloo team developed a drone-powered device called Wi-Peep that can see through walls using Wi-Fi networks. The potential uses for this technology are vast, but the privacy implications are also significant.