Researchers have been working on ways to "see" people without using cameras or expensive LiDAR hardware for years. In 2013, a team of researchers at MIT found a way to use cell phone signals to see through walls. In 2018, another MIT team used Wi-Fi to detect people in another room and translate their movements into walking stick figures. Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Waterloo are advancing our ability to see through walls using Wi-Fi.

How it's possible to see through walls

The researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new method for detecting three-dimensional shapes and movements of human bodies in a room, using only Wi-Fi routers. The team used DensePose, a system for mapping all of the pixels on the surface of a human body in a photo, which was developed by London-based researchers and Facebook's AI team.