If you’ve played any of the recent Batman video games,
you’re probably already familiar with his ability to scan through walls using
one of the many gadgets he has at his disposal. In real life, German scientists
from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) may have developed a technology
that could give you a similar Batman-esque skill. What makes it even cooler?
Basically all it takes is a Wi-Fi signal.
“It can basically scan a room with someone’s Wi-Fi
transmission,” Philipp Holl said, speaking to Business Insider. Holl and TUM
professor Friedemann Reinhard developed the concept behind the technology and
published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters.
It’s surprisingly simple, exploiting Wi-Fi’s ability to pass
through walls. Using two antennas, they record a Wi-Fi field around a
particular room. The antennas capture the intensity and the phase of the Wi-Fi
field both from its source spot and the places it bounces off from. The result
is a holographic image of the room that, while it’s not yet vivid, proves that
the concept works in practice rather than just theory.
LIFE-SAVING TECH
The ability to see through walls might be a little
unsettling at first, as it could open up potential privacy exploitation issues.
“Of course, this raises privacy questions. After all, to a certain degree even
encrypted signals transmit an image of their surroundings to the outside
world,” Reinhard said in a press release from TUM, “However, it is rather
unlikely that this process will be used for the view into foreign bedrooms in
the near future. For that, you would need to go around the building with a large
antenna, which would hardly go unnoticed. There are simpler ways available.”
The tech could also have many beneficial — if not
life-saving — applications. Apart from the potential to be used by spy agencies
for legitimate operations requiring the scanning of buildings, it could also be
an asset to rescue operations after a disaster such as an earthquake or an
avalanche. The antennas could be placed in a truck and then driven around the
rubble or debris are to survey and look for survivors.
“These antennas don’t need to be big. They can be very
small, like the ones in a smartphone,” Holl said, meaning they could be easily
wielded even in the smallest, most remote, spaces.
Further research, such as on the transparency of specific
materials, is needed to refine the technology. But it’s exciting to think that
superhero technology could come to life in such a way, especially with
potentially life-saving applications.
