
Could wireless replace wearables? - msolujic
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/could-wireless-replace-wearables
======
mattgibson
So someone could make that motion tracker thing out of Alien, which works
through walls, just using wifi and an LCD screen?

I want one. Where's the app?

Actually, reading the original paper, it needs quite a bulky antenna array,
looking like a TV aerial (photo on page 3:
[http://18.7.29.232/bitstream/handle/1721.1/86299/MIT-
CSAIL-T...](http://18.7.29.232/bitstream/handle/1721.1/86299/MIT-CSAIL-
TR-2014-008.pdf?sequence=1))

I still want one.

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Houshalter
Similar, a camera can also be sufficient to measure heart rate:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5QVm8M9PE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5QVm8M9PE)

The method is actually quite interesting. By exaggerating slight changes in
color you can actually visually see someone's pulse (and other small changes
in the environment.)

~~~
ntoshev
I wonder if this technology will eventually become good enough to measure the
heart rate of lying politicians from just video records. Bill Clinton would
make an excellent example. Makeup might fool it though.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
You don't need to name a politician to imply lying. Naming one you believed
_didn 't_ lie would be more interesting. The problem may be similar to the lie
detector problem: if so much of what you say is false and, in some way, you
really believe it, it may be indistinguishable from the truth.

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cmelbye
"But events such as Fitbit's recent recall of more than 1 million fitness
bands over user skin irritations,"

Weird that they pointed this out as a flaw in wearable technology. Isn't that
just poor choice in material? Seems like a solved problem to me.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
When you are trying to hype the _Next Big Thing_ (tm) it helps to denigrate
the current big thing. Also, how big a deal the FitBit recall is is a question
of how impirtant that material is to their sensors.

Besides for little 3 month old Annie, you don't want to have to strap
something on her.

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reitanqild
Let me guess this can have a wide range of applications outside of baby
monitoring as well...

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spacefight
Did you mean "baby making" monitoring? ;)

~~~
XorNot
Just as illegal as when you try it with a thermal camera?

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lotsofmangos
I read somewhere ages ago about researchers measuring pulse and respiration of
a mobile phone user from the data available to a cellular base station.

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kator
Isn't this just RADAR applied at higher resolutions and indoors? I'm sure
they've done some really interesting stuff if you dig deep but this doesn't
seem like "Wireless" as much as it's transmitting and observing radio
reflections[1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar)

~~~
gitah
The article mentioned that there was a ton of noise and the researchers had to
use customer filters to remove them.

I wonder how well this technology would work in the real world. There will be
a lot more interference and random, unexpected obstacles than in a lab
environment.

~~~
kator
I guess I object to calling it "Wireless" when it's really just RADAR. It
feels like they're trying to use the term wireless to make it less innocuous?
I mean if they said they were working on High Resolution hand-held RADAR
systems then the public would freak out thinking about the kid in the picture.
Meanwhile calling it "wireless" seems to make it ok because we're all exposed
to "wireless" with our wifi and wireless phones.

In the end it's all radio with all it's pluses and minuses.

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Nanzikambe
I see the future of purchasing intent based analytic solutions, and it is
scary! Now in store mechanisms will not only determine the customer's intent
and object/area of interest (this is the current "big thing"), but assess
heart rate and infer excitement too!

There you are, beset by a horde of sales people who recoil in horror when they
find your elevated heart rate is the wrong kind of excitement, making the
potential sale an awkward one:

    
    
       "Arghh! Get back! Get back! He's in the adult section!"
    

We live in interesting times.

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XorNot
The goal of wearables is a focus on the self not the environment - i.e. my
digital environment extends out from me, I don't configure my environment to
project it onto me.

It's interesting technology, but in a totally different domain to wearables.

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btbuildem
Shudder to think of the military applications of this

~~~
higherpurpose
With autonomous robots.

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aw3c2
Direct link: [http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/could-wireless-replace-
wearab...](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/could-wireless-replace-wearables)

~~~
dang
Thanks. We changed it from [http://gigaom.com/2014/06/13/mit-can-now-track-a-
heart-rate-...](http://gigaom.com/2014/06/13/mit-can-now-track-a-heart-rate-
through-a-wall-with-wi-fi-signals/).

