Everyone in the world is rethinking shared spaces right about now, and part of that rethink is understanding how they’re used, minute by minute and day by day. Density’s tiny ceiling-mounted radar finds and tracks people unobtrusively but with great precision, letting the powers that be monitor every table, chair and office.
Okay, in some ways that doesn’t sound great. But don’t worry, we’ll get to that.
Density began looking into creating large-scale people-monitoring tech after seeing the possibilities latent in its entryway-monitoring Entry device, which tracks people coming and going using infrared imagery. They settled on radar as a technology that has the range and precision to cover hundreds of square feet from a single point, but also lacks any capability of easily identifying someone.
That’s an important point, as many are wary of installing people-monitoring software on ordinary security cameras. The potential for abuse is high simply because the imagery is easy to match with identities. So while it may be cheaper to layer some computer vision on top of a regular camera, there are non-trivial risks and shortcomings.
Not to mention few like the idea of security cameras watching over every desk and computer, able to read confidential documents and see every minute motion. The system Density has created is very much focused on presence — is someone in that chair? Is someone in that office? How many people are in this room?
The radar produces point clouds, but not the detailed ones you see in the lidar systems of self-driving cars. It really is more like a cloud than anything else — a small, upright cloud standing near the fridge in the office kitchen. When someone else comes in to grab a coffee, there’s another, separately tracked cloud. But there’s not enough detail to tell people apart, or, without careful scrutiny anyway, features like size or clothing.