from the knowing-exactly-where-you-are dept.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique for measuring speed and distance in indoor environments, which could be used to improve navigation technologies for robots, drones -- or pedestrians trying to find their way around an airport. The technique uses a novel combination of Wi-Fi signals and accelerometer technology to track devices in near-real time.
"We call our approach Wi-Fi-assisted Inertial Odometry (WIO)," says Raghav Venkatnarayan, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "WIO uses Wi-Fi as a velocity sensor to accurately track how far something has moved. Think of it as sonar, but using radio waves, rather than sound waves."
"We created WIO to work in conjunction with a device's IMU*, correcting any errors and improving the accuracy of speed and distance calculations," says Muhammad Shahzad, co-corresponding author of the paper and an assistant professor of computer science at NC State. "This improvement in accuracy should also improve the calculations regarding a device's precise location in any indoor environment where there is a Wi-Fi signal."
[...] "We envision WIO as having applications in everything from indoor navigational tools to fitness tracking to interactive gaming," Venkatnarayan says.
"We are currently working with Sony to further improve WIO's accuracy, with an eye toward incorporating the software into off-the-shelf technologies," says Shahzad.
*Inertial Measurement Units
(Score: 3, Insightful) by qzm on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:06PM (4 children)
Ummm. Sonar but using radio waves would be.... Radar?
And why on earth would you use wi-fi signals which are very poor for such use, instead of just a well designed signal?
Academically interesting no doubt.. But seems somewhat odd for any real world use. Actual radar is common enough.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:33PM
Because most people already have wifi hardware running in their homes and businesses, which can be surreptitiously hijacked as surveillance devices. From what I've read, if they can access three wifi devices simultaneously they can get a pretty good 3d image.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:36PM
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3aaqp/mit-device-uses-wifi-to-see-through-walls-and-track-your-movements [vice.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:39PM
"Ummm. Sonar but using radio waves would be.... Radar?"
That's what i first thought of. Sonar? Why not just say "It's like echo-location" or "It's like making waves when peeing into the water".
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday August 28 2019, @10:50PM
It has to be done or you will never " open the eye" on your received signal due to the intersymbol interference injected by reflections of the signal you are listening to.
One uses an adaptive filter to compensate. It constantly tracks the amplitude and delay of the interfering reflections. And adds the inverse of the interferors back in. Also known as a transversal filter.
A lot of info can be gleaned from examining the coefficients at the delay taps.
My take is this is what they are doing.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:22PM
Sounds like something you can already get with IMU plus GPS once you have an initial fix you can believe in. The underlying tech seems like Doppler radar which is going to require a significant change to the RF front end of the WiFi base station. Normally you do this by mixing the output with the signal reflected off (or maybe transmitted by) the object you are looking to track. The difference frequency is the Doppler shift which is proportional to how fast the object is moving towards/away from the source. Lots of problems to solve here, the biggest being that there’s no azimuth information if you’re only using a single WiFi source.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:25AM
The rumors are that TPTB have something called a 'continual wave' generator that uses tiny invisible reflectors to image rooms remotely, so imaging a room without needing wires or a transmitting device that could be found.
If even normal wifi can be used as radar, how is this not the same as having a camera potentially in every house? What is described here is crude, but you know military applications of similar things are going to be much more advanced.
If the government has access to tech like this where it can scan your room, or continually record it, and they don't even tell the civilian population they have such a tool....
Aren't we at that point simply ruled by the military and people who have this power? What possible civilian legal measure could even force the military to reveal it had something like this? Do you have a right for the government not to beam your house? What possible legal framework could protect that right from a determined amoral satellite operator, or a criminal for that matter?
Especially if they know far ahead of time which people are asking this question, so that all measures could be put to use to make sure this person never becomes a journalist or representative, or anything that has credibility.
And this is what I am saying a lot, we are facing the possibility of a distinctly two tiered system where one of the tiers has absolute, unquestionable power over the other.
I write about potential ways forward at my website, globaldebate.net, decultification.org, thesesystemsarefailing.net