# Capture a human figure through a wall. New wireless tech research.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capture-a-human-figure-through-a-wall-new-wireless-tech-research/736008>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [October 28, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capture-a-human-figure-through-a-wall-new-wireless-tech-research/736008 "2015-10-28T19:46:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capture-a-human-figure-through-a-wall-new-wireless-tech-research/736008/1 "2015-10-28T19:46:08Z")

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Quite an interesting paper from MIT. I understood maybe 30%. 😃 But they do include photos. The future applications for this tech are exciting. Everything from switching on/off lights in a home to monitoring that a person in poor health is moving and not in distress. The data returned is minimal and doesn’t reveal physical body features like the scanners at airports.

I think there are so many possibilities for this in practical applications. imho Its really just an updated optical control sensor like we already have. They’re used right now at my job to turn off the lights in unoccupied. Burglar alarms and so on. Except this new tech is smarter and even more adaptable to real word applications.

I’m curious about the difference in this tech and thermal imaging. The size and complexity of the equipment. Cost. Which works better in specific applications.

Daily Mail link (yeah, I know, 😛 but they used the photos and some text from the MIT paper) What they’ve provided is a short summary of this long academic paper.

> **[Seeing through WALLS using Wi-Fi](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3292246/Forget-X-rays-walls-using-WI-FI-Device-captures-silhouettes-identify-people-stood-CONCRETE.html)**
>
> RF Capture was developed at MIT. It works by scanning a room in 3D using signals through a wall. These signals reflect off everything behind it, including a person's body, to create a silhouette.

MIT paper. Interesting to skim through if you’re into science. But its 13 pages and gets pretty technical. I’d love to attend the conference where it will be presented.  
[http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/rfcapture-paper.pdf](http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/rfcapture-paper.pdf)

> [@](#):
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> Using a wireless transmitter fitted behind a wall, computer scientists have developed a device that can map a nearby room in 3D while scanning for human bodies.
> 
> Using the signals that bounce and reflect off these people, the device creates an accurate silhouette and can even use this silhouette to identify who that person is.