In the first demo, Raviv Melamed, CEO and cofounder of Vayyar and Walabot , uses the camera on his phone to see through our conference room table and detect the number of fingers he’s holding up beneath the surface. Next, there’s a video of a person walking down a hall and moving behind a barrier; the technology senses the human form even though it’s no longer visible to our eyes. Then comes a clip of vodka being poured past a couple of sensors to determine the purity of the alcohol on a microscopic level.

This superhero-like X-ray vision comes courtesy of a new microchip-based, radio frequency sensor technology. It can be used to analyze and create 3-D images of pretty much anything behind or inside objects (the only thing it can’t “see” through is metal). Radio frequency tech has been around for decades; what makes this chip innovative is that it instantly transforms RF waves into digital output. Radio waves emitted from the chip sense how much of the signal is absorbed by an object in its path. Algorithms can then be applied to the digital data translated from the RF signals and determine all kinds of information about those objects: their density, dimensions, and using software, what those objects actually are.

Though it’s not the first technology capable of turning RF into digital, it’s certainly among the smallest and least expensive—the sensor could fit inside a mobile phone. Vayyar, which created the chip technology and is selling Walabot, is based in Tel Aviv with 36 employees, and has raised $34 million in funding. It’s part of the rapidly evolving imaging technology sector that includes the handheld ultrasound device from Butterfly Network Inc., the space-mapping camera from Matterport, and the security scanner that can detect weapons underneath clothing from the U.K.-based company Radio Physics.

The first application of Vayyar’s chip is medical: It’s being developed to detect tumors in breast tissue. Since it can be produced at a fraction of the cost, and physical size, of today’s solutions, it potentially makes breast cancer screening accessible and affordable to people around the globe.

What else could it be used for? That’s where you come in. Walabot is being released publicly in April so that robot makers and hardware tinkerers can build their own apps for Android, Raspberry Pi, or most any other computer with a USB connection. “Why limit the technology for one startup when you can actually go and allow other people to innovate?” says Melamed, a former Intel executive and Israeli Defense Forces engineer.

Walabot has seemingly endless potential applications. It could be used to analyze your breathing while you sleep, or examine root structures in your garden, or track the speed of cars racing past your house. And when it comes to video gaming, Melamed says this technology is far more accurate than any other single motion sensor currently on the market. It could help untether VR headsets by pairing with sensors placed on the body–perhaps simple bands around players’ arms and legs.

Panning for gold with Walabot.

Melamed uses the example of a simple virtual ping-pong match. Right now, the only moving body parts would be the head and a hand, since that’s all that can be tracked. “I want to see your body, I want to see your movement, right?” says Melamed. “You have those other technologies, like accelerometers–the problem with accelerometers is they drift. What we can do with this technology is actually put several sensors on your body and track your body in a room like 5 meters by 5 meters, to the level of a centimeter, and now this is a totally different kind of feeling, I can actually see your limbs and we don’t drift.”