Since the time of Maxwell radio signals have been known to change in the presence of people or objects. Now a Canadian startup is using RF sensing to extract motion data from the Wi-Fi signals in your home – and turning the knowledge gleaned into a host of new, valuable use cases.
The company – aptly called Cognitive Systems – set out four years ago to discover and develop a practical way to detect motion of physical objects through RF sensing. The choice of what RF signals to analyze fell on Wi-Fi because Wi-Fi signals are practically in every home and nearly everywhere inside the home too, says Co-founder and CEO of Cognitive Systems, Taj Manku.
Reliable detection from pets to humans
Detecting motion by means of RF sensing turned out to be a hard problem to solve. But through the development of AI-type algorithms and a lot of meticulous testing, the company has managed to do just that. Cognitive Systems can today detect physical motion very reliably – and the platform is now busy ‘learning’ to tell the difference between a pet and a human rummaging about the kitchen at night.
Contrary to visual cameras or motion detectors, RF sensing of this kind potentially requires no additional hardware and is completely unobtrusive, says Taj. “It’s really simple to use, and it just works even under a wide range of load and interference conditions and in any kind of house,” says Taj.
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