X-Ray Vision Technology Now Exists, Uses Wi-Fi To See Through Walls

Anyone who has ever watched a Superman episode or played the recent Batman Arkham series of video games might be familiar with the how X-Ray vision works. With super powers or a high-tech gadget, one could see through walls and objects. Scientists at Technical University of Munich (TUM) recently unveiled a technology that could actually make this staple of fiction a reality.

To be clear, the technology that the German scientists created doesn’t exactly follow the same principles as X-Ray, which is to see through molecules of solid objects. It basically reconstructs the current state of the room on the other side of the wall via Wi-Fi signals. At least, that’s what one of the scientists told Business Insider.

It’s easy to take for granted that Wi-Fi can actually pass through walls. Though, this isn’t all that obvious sometimes when signals cut out upon leaving a room. In any case, Philipp Holl, 23, said that the technology they created can basically manufacture a 3D representation of a particular room in order to provide its rough proportions. This would make it incredibly useful for situations like search and rescue.

"If there's a cup of coffee on a table, you may see something is there, but you couldn't see the shape," Holl told BI. "But you could make out the shape of a person, or a dog on a couch. Really any object that's more than 4 centimeters in size."

Naturally, this kind of technology has the potential to raise some serious uproar over privacy issues. To that, Professor Friedemann Reinhard who oversaw the project assures that it is unlikely to be used in such a manner. In a university press release, he explained that the technology would be far too cumbersome for anyone to use in any kind of discreet manner.

“However, it is rather unlikely that this process will be used for the view into foreign bedrooms in the near future,” Reinhard said. “For that, you would need to go around the building with a large antenna, which would hardly go unnoticed. There are simpler ways available.”