How wireless “X-ray vision” – RF Capture – could power virtual reality, smart homes, and Hollywood

In a paper accepted to the SIGGRAPH Asia conference taking place next month,the team presents a new technology called RF Capture that picks up wireless reflections off the human body to see the silhouette of a human standing behind a wall.

“RF Capture would enable motion capture without body sensors and could track actors‘ movements even if they are behind furniture or walls.”

The device works by transmitting wireless signals that traverse the wall and reflect off a person’s body back to the device.

The key challenge is that different individuals – and, for that matter, different body parts – all reflect the same signal.

The technology operates in two stages: First, it scans 3-D space to capture wireless reflections off objects in the environment, including the human body.

Since only a subset of body parts reflect the signal back at any given point in time, the device then monitors how these reflections vary as someone moves inthe environment and intelligently stitches the person’s reflections across time to reconstruct his silhouette into a single image.

To differentiate between people, the team then repeatedly tested and trained the device on different subjects, using metrics such as height and body shape to create concrete “Silhouette fingerprints” for each person.

Read more: How wireless “X-ray vision” could power virtual reality, smart homes, and Hollywood