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Your simple Wi-Fi router (opens in new tab) signal can be used to track your movements in a room, bat-style, a new report claims.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently published a report describing an experiment using common standard Wi-Fi routers to detect people’s location, as well as their poses, in a room.
The experiment, while not without its flaws, was an overall success and proved that the endpoints could be used to track people. It is described as an ethical and privacy sensitive way of monitoring (usually elderly and single) individuals.
Accurate images
In layman’s terms, the Wi-Fi signal sent by the routers can be used as a kind of sonar, where an AI-powered program analyzes the difference in density between outgoing and incoming signals and comes back with wireframe images of people in the space. room.
In some cases, the images came back incomplete, or showed people in weird, unnatural poses, showing that the method clearly needs work. But in many cases, the images created by the AI were quite accurate. People’s positions in a room were accurate, their measurements were accurate, their postures were accurate.
Besides the occasional display error, another major challenge is being able to track a larger number of people. So far, the routers can successfully track up to three people.
For the experiment, the researchers used TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 devices, which cost a measly $32. Compared to other tracking technologies such as LIDAR or radar, using Wi-Fi routers for this purpose is vastly cheaper. In some cases, the routers could even be a better solution than cameras, as they also work when people hide behind objects such as furniture.
It looks like the researchers will continue their work and try to improve the solution through better public training data for Wi-Fi based perception.
Through: Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab)