Three-mile stretch of underground fiber optic cables on a campus are now being used to sense human movement in a research project called the “Big Glass Microphone”. Usually, researchers ignore any incidental extra signals that the cables pick up — those that don’t have to do with the cables’ main purpose — and filter them out as “noise.” But vibrations can cause these hair-thin strands to stretch. By measuring the amount they stretch, researchers can discern if a person, car or a motorcycle is rolling past it. The fiber optic loop under Stanford’s campus was originally installed last August for seismic research, but the Stanford team, with the help of OptaSense, decided to turn the noise into signals. If proven successful, this could eventually point to a future of surveillance without the need for fancy cameras and other technology. Read more about this news or go back to the original post here.

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