Wireless power system shown off

[Netto Azure]

Well since people rarely go to the SciTech forum. D:
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Wireless power system shown off

Witricity claims to be able to charge gadgets large and small

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A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.
The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices.
Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.
He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.
"There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power," he said.
Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires "to get power form where it is created to where it is used."
"We love this stuff [electricity] so much," he said.
Mr Giler showed off a Google G1 phone and an Apple iPhone that could be charged using the system.
Witricity, he said, had managed to pack all the necessary components into the body of the G1 phone, but Apple had made that process slightly harder.
"They don't make it easy at Apple to get inside their phones so we put a little sleeve on the back," he said.
He also showed off a commercially available television using the system.
"Imagine you get one of these things and you want to hang it on the wall," he said. "Think about it, you don't want those ugly cords hanging down."

That's a far cry from the old Tesla Coils. :3

 

[TTEchidna]

I can't wait to get my wireless extension cords!

 

[Æsahættr]

Holy crap.

I used to dream up stuff like this when I was 8.

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

Holy crap.

I used to dream up stuff like this when I was 8.

Shoulda made a patent. You could've been rich now, but alas...

 

[Æsahættr]

Yeah, I'd've been a millionaire.

Until someone puts a pacemaker/phone/iPod/child between the output and input.

 

[Netto Azure]

Yeah, I'd've been a millionaire.

Until someone puts a pacemaker/phone/iPod/child between the output and input.

LOL another part of the article. XP

Magnetic fields interact with everyday objects less than electric fields

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Safety concerns
Mr Giler was keen to stress the safety of the equipment during the demonstration.
"There's nothing going on - I'm OK," he said walking around a television running on wireless power.
The system is able to operate safely because the energy is largely transferred through magnetic fields.
"Humans and the vast majority of objects around us are non-magnetic in nature," Professor Soljacic, one of the inventors of the system, told BBC News during a visit to Witricity earlier this year.
It is able to do this by exploiting an effect that occurs in a region known as the "far field", the region seen at a distance of more than one wavelength from the device.
In this field, a transmitter would emit mixture of magnetic and potentially dangerous electric fields.
But, crucially, at a distance of less than one wavelength - the "near field" - it is almost entirely magnetic.
Hence, Witricity uses low frequency electromagnetic waves, whose waves are about 30m (100ft) long. Shorter wavelengths would not work.

 

[Æsahættr]

Oh wow, magnetic fields - that's really simple! Oh man kudos to these guys, because this is a stroke of genius.

 

[Watermarx]

This would really come in handy. Will this work for a Nintendo DS too? :\ I just lost my charger, so I'd need one of these. :|

 

[Jukain]

There's one Nikola Tesla never thought of. This is quite interesting.

 

[Gligar13]

That would be cool, now i dont need to teather stuff to charge.

 

[evkl]

Interesting problem, though--you think WiFi theft is bad? What about power theft?

 

[nickstr]

Amazing, so wireless electricity is now a reality but the history of this is a long one and led to many failures but out of one of them we got something quite useful. One attempt I can think of in Japan led to an extremely effective gain type antenna for VHF known as the Yagi-Uda which was shortened to Yagi named after the person who made it known to the rest of the world through writings in English. This came out of wireless electricity experiments in 1928. Even before reading the article I had a feeling that using part of the LF or VLF radio spectrum was the answer given that the the frequency that AC electricity cycles at is VLF either 50 Hz, 60 Hz, or even 75 Hz depending on the country. Here in the US for example its 60 Hz and in Japan 50 Hz. I have a feeling at some point soon there will be satellites orbiting the earth collecting solar energy using an array of solar panels, converting the photons into electricity, and transmitting it to earth wirelessly kind of like what is seen in the Sim City games such as Sim City 3000 which I was addicted to at one point and in a way still am.

 

[Æsahættr]

Interesting problem, though--you think WiFi theft is bad? What about power theft?

It might be possible to work in the same way most wireless controllers work - having to be physically synchronised at the source. I would also assume that household applications would require a very short range of usage; wireless internet, especially on laptops, would be required throughout an entire house, whereas it would be feasible to have a short-range wireless port in place of power sockets localised in every room of a modern home.

 

[evkl]

It might be possible to work in the same way most wireless controllers work - having to be physically synchronised at the source. I would also assume that household applications would require a very short range of usage; wireless internet, especially on laptops, would be required throughout an entire house, whereas it would be feasible to have a short-range wireless port in place of power sockets localised in every room of a modern home.

This is true, I suppose, but in places like apartments if you didn't have tethering, you'd be stuck. It obviously needs to fill a given room completely--you don't want a dead zone in the corner, for instance--and so the radius of the 'power bubble' could be quite a bit larger than the dimensions a given room. Of course, I'm kind of assuming it can go through walls, which could be untrue. I'm not sure if you could 'tether' it; it seems like the power is open, not password- or frequency-protectable.

 

[Shinx3000]

I have heard of wireless power systems a long time ago, good stuff though. I am not sure if this is the same company I saw on TV before. The Gadget show in UK went to a US company and they were working on wireless power technology and it looked really good

 

[Phoenicks]

Huh, this sounds cool! But since the energy is transferred through magnetical fields, what does that mean if you have magnetic objects attacked to you? Still, this is sounding really sweet. I hope that they can find good commercial uses for this.

 

[Jeff]

Let's not forget, you'd be using magnetic waves to power things such as laptops. That can't be a good thing. Of course they probably found a way around that, but there's still the problem of efficiency. There'd have to be a huge discrepancy between the energy in the sending end and the energy in the receiving end, otherwise if you had two devices picking up the signal from the same sender, the total energy being picked up would be double that being sent, which is physically impossible.