Joint research by UW and Microsoft Research is described in the New York Times.
The research provides gestural remote control by means of algorithms that interpret and harness the interaction between the human body and the ambient electromagnetic field that is emitted as a matter of course by the wiring in households, by the power lines above homes, and by the gas pumps at service stations. The work was described in the CHI 2011 paper “Your Noise is My Command: Sensing Gestures Using the Body as an Antenna” by Gabe Cohn (UW EE graduate student), Dan Morris (Microsoft Research, and UW CSE affiliate professor), Shwetak Patel (UW CSE and EE professor), and Desney Tan (Microsoft Research, and UW CSE affiliate professor).
Read the New York Times article here.