The more pervasive Wi-Fi gets, the more uses we seem to find for it. The latest case in point: a team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara - who have already used Wi-Fi to let robots see through walls - have now found a way to use Wi-Fi to estimate the number of people in a given space. What's more, they're able to do so without depending on people actually carrying Wi-Fi devices.
Instead, as Professor Yasamin Mostofi explained in a news release, they rely only on analyzing the power measurements that are received by a Wi-Fi link - in the case of their experiment, two Wi-Fi cards placed at opposite ends of a target area. By measuring the changes in the signal when people walk through the area, they're able to estimate the number of people in the space. And, according to the researchers, they're able to do so with a high degree of accuracy, both indoors and out.
Given how widely Wi-Fi is used these days, the researchers see no shortage of potential applications for the head-counting method, from counting the number of people in a building and adjusting the heating or air conditioning accordingly, to estimating the number of shoppers in a store for business planning purposes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mostofi also says that her group plans to combine this new effort with their aforementioned research into imaging objects and people through walls, suggesting that Wi-Fi could soon not just be ever-present, but all-seeing as well.
Check out the video below for more on the experiment.
