A new way to monitor vital signs (that can see through walls) | Dina Katabi

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2018

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At MIT, Dina Katabi and her team are working on a bold new way to monitor patients' vital signs in a hospital (or even at home), without wearables or bulky, beeping devices. Bonus: it can see through walls. In a mind-blowing talk and demo, Katabi previews a system that captures the reflections of signals like Wi-Fi as they bounce off people, creating a reliable record of vitals for healthcare workers and patients. And in a brief Q&A with TED curator Helen Walters, Katabi discusses safeguards being put in place to prevent people from using this tech to monitor somebody without their consent.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features technologist Dina Katabi recorded live at TED-2018.
0:08.0	When I was a kid, I was, like many of you in this room, very much fascinated by Star Wars.
0:14.6	And what fascinated me the most is this notion of the force.
0:19.2	This energy that connects all people and all objects
0:22.4	and allows you to feel people that you can't even see.
0:26.1	And I remember many nights I would be sitting at home
0:29.3	just concentrating and focusing trying to feel the force.
0:34.1	And I didn't feel anything, don't worry.
0:38.5	And later in life, I became a scientist.
0:41.4	I joined the MIT faculty and started working on wireless signals.
0:46.7	These are things like Wi-Fi or cellular systems, and I did a lot of work in that domain.
0:52.9	But then, again, this force thing kept nagging me.
0:58.0	And at some point, I just like, wait a minute, these wireless signals, they are like the force.
1:04.0	So if you think about it, wireless signals, they travel through space, they go through
1:09.0	obstacles and walls and occlusions,
1:11.6	and some of them, they reflect off our bodies because our bodies are full of water.
1:16.6	And some of these minute reflections, they come back.
1:20.6	And if, just if, I had a device that can just sense these minute reflections,
1:26.6	then I would be able to feel people that I cannot see.
1:31.3	So I started working with my students on building such a device,
1:35.3	and I want to show you some of our early results.
1:39.3	So here you see my students standing, and here is our device,
	...

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