You may not have thought about it, but those Wi-Fi signals in your house are bouncing off your body every moment that router is running. Consider this: why not use those body-bouncing Wi-Fi signals to your advantage?
That's what a team at the University of Washington did when they developed WiSee, a system that allows users to control lights, gadgets, appliances and a ton of other electronics with gesture-based movements—from any room in the house. Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360 uses infrared signals to keep track and recognize body movements, and WiSee works similarly using Wi-Fi signals. Once a user has performed a big gesture (like waving a right hand) to get the system's attention, which also acts as a security measure, users perform smaller gestures, like raising a hand up and down to control volume, for example.
During a test, WiSee was able to identify 94-percent of 900 gestures, like pushing, pulling, twisting, and more complicated motions like bowling.
[via PopSci]
