Jan 24, 2023 20:00:00

It is possible to generate 3D images of humans with Wi-Fi routers in ordinary homes

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have announced a method to detect and recognize human positions and postures using Wi-Fi routers and generate 3D images. It has been pointed out that it may be a breakthrough for fields such as healthcare, security, and games (VR), as 3D images can be generated with a Wi-Fi router that anyone can easily obtain.

[2301.00250] Dense Pose From WiFi

https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00250

WiFi Routers Used to Produce 3D Images of Humans
https://vpnoverview.com/news/wifi-routers-used-to-produce-3d-images-of-humans/

The research team has several general Wi-Fi transmitters such as those installed in the TP-Link Wi-Fi router Archer A7 AC1750 , which is sold for about $ 50 (about 6500 yen) in the United States. I was able to place it in a room and create a wireframe image of what was detected in the room.

Furthermore, by using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, we have also succeeded in generating 3D images of people in the room from the bounce of Wi-Fi signals. Technically, it is 'analyzing the amplitude and phase of the Wi-Fi signal to find human interference signals'.

The research team said in their paper, 'The results of this study show that the model we built performed in a crowded room with multiple subjects with performance comparable to image-based approaches, while using Wi-Fi signals as the only input information. It shows that individual poses can be estimated correctly.' The “image-based approach” here refers to conventional cameras and radar technologies like

LiDAR . It also has the advantage of being able to create accurate 3D images even in areas with poor lighting or objects that block the camera, and is much cheaper than traditional approaches. it is.

The AI algorithm used by the research team is DensePose , an open source developed by Facebook AI Research that can estimate human posture from 2D images and map textures to the human body surface.

The research team wrote, ``We believe that Wi-Fi signals can serve as a ubiquitous replacement for RGB images used to detect humans,'' and the potential to replace existing camera-based human detection systems. I mentioned In addition, he said that it is possible to purchase the necessary equipment at an affordable price while protecting personal privacy better than existing systems. In addition, ``Most homes in developed countries already have Wi-Fi routers, so this technology can be used to monitor the health status of the elderly and identify suspicious behavior at home. It may become, ”he notes, citing future applications of 3D image generation technology using Wi-Fi routers.

There is a drawback that the accuracy of 3D image generation decreases when there are abnormal poses or when there are more than 3 subjects in the space, but this can be solved by improving the training data of the AI algorithm (DensePose). am. Therefore, the research team wrote, ``In future work, we plan to collect multi-layout data and extend the work to predict the three-dimensional shape of humans from Wi-Fi signals.''

However, VPNOverview , which deals with VPN -related news and reviews, points out that ``If this technology becomes mainstream, it may cause serious privacy problems.'' In developed countries where ``one per household'' Wi-Fi routers are commonplace, there is a possibility that Wi-Fi routers can be abused by cybercriminals, etc. We may lose.'