back to article Disturbance in the force lets phones detect gestures with Wi-Fi

How would you like a phone that gives you gesture recognition - without needing to buy a new phone? That's the tantalising prospect offered by a project at the University of Washington (UoW), which uses the existing Wi-Fi capabilities of consumer-grade devices (laptops were used for the research paper) to work out peoples' …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds familiar

    Wax on, wax off.

  2. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Trollface

    That's nothing!

    I can already switch off my jesus phone with telepathy. Simply have to strongly think "switch off!" for about twenty hours...

  3. Jonathan D

    disappointed it doesn't work on micro changes in air density..

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Security

    "so you could, for example, answer the phone without reaching for it"

    Presumably anyone close to you could command your phone as well.

  5. BoldMan

    Can you detect the gesture I'm making now?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, you obscene brat!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Siri voice

    "You'll go blind"

  7. Mike Bell

    Specifically, as the human moves her arm

    So, that's men ruled out, then, apparently.

    Whereas, if you're not trying to be a politically correct ponce, the possessive determiner 'his' would have covered all bases nicely.

    1. Nick Kew
      Facepalm

      Re: Specifically, as the human moves her arm

      It must be only the female whose arms are anatomically close to big wobbly bits whose movements are what it really detects.

      I'll get me coat.

    2. HMB

      Re: Specifically, as the human moves her arm

      Patriarchal oppressor! :P

    3. DNTP

      his/her > XIR

      An inclusive human moves xir arm. This has nothing to do with political correctness, we really need to get this thing updated with non-gendered singular-implied possessives, and I'm simply promoting it because it's funny as hell.

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: his/her > XIR

        But there's already an acceptable, non gender specific word with centuries of use, "it".

        "The human moves its arm", what could be easier?

        It's not like there's precedent for using it either. How often have you heard, "Who is it?"

      2. Vic

        Re: his/her > XIR

        An inclusive human moves xir arm

        "Shkler". Yivo told me so...

        Vic.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: men ruled out @ Mike Bell

    Regardless of what the "standard" usage is supposed to be, many people (now) do not read "him" as applying to both sexes, but only (ever) as applying to men. A simple "as the human moves their arm" would suffice to be a neutral phrase, although personalising the example(s) to some person in particular "as Mike moves his arm" or "as Michelle moves her arm" would also be fine, imo.

  9. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

    But... but why would I wave at my phone from a foot away when it has buttons?

  10. Christoph

    Oh great

    So if someone is standing in a jam-packed commuter train, they can answer their phone just by waving their arms about in sweeping gestures?

  11. User McUser

    as the human moves her arm, the wireless reflection[s] [...] interfere with the direct signal from the Wi-Fi transmitter. This results in peaks and troughs in the amplitude of the received signals

    So basically they've reinvented the theremin?

  12. batfink

    Arm movements?

    So when I start waving my arms about in the pub this friday night after a few pints, I'll be answering everyone's phones then?

  13. Ian Michael Gumby
    Devil

    Ok... here's the challenge...

    Who's going to be the first one to write an interactive game of pong for two players using wi-fi gestures only?

    (The spawn of satan because it will be yet another useless game that will take up oodles of people's time and will probably make a fortune if you could figure out how to sell in game items... :-P )

  14. CaptainBanjax

    I for one

    Would like to see the chaos created by a mexican wave.

    Im not up for this, saluting our phones is one step closer to kneeling before our robot overlords.

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