Standards body ETSI has launched a new Industry Specification Group (ISG) focused on the emerging technology of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS). The group has been created to review and establish global standardization for RIS technology. RIS underpins smart radio surfaces in which thousands of small antennas or metamaterial elements combine to shape and control radio signals dynamically, in a fluid way that is driven by goals or intents. The technology aims to turn the whole wireless environment into a service, which could enable many new use cases, according to ETSI, including enhanced KPIs for coverage and capacity, and new applications such as localization and sensing. For instance, RIS can reconfigure the radio environment to sense human posture and detect someone…