What started out as an MIT project
two years ago has now progressed into a full-fledged company -- ladies and gentlemen, meet WiTricity Corp. Auntie Beeb (that's the
BBC for you Yanks) has grabbed the firm's CEO Eric Giler to discuss some pretty aggressive plans for bringing wireless power to the masses. Yes, we're talking actual through-the-air wireless as opposed to something like
Palm's Touchstone, which requires physical contact between charger and chargee. Based on magnetic induction, the magical technology is apparently mature enough to be deployed in the relatively near future, and if all goes to plan, "near future" could translate into "18 months from now." Also of note, Intel is hard at work
developing the original concept, and if the parallel engineering of the same idea by two companies isn't enough to get your skepticism dialed down and your browser to the video past the break, what is?
posted Jul 24th 2009 8:02AM
Wonder how this affects pacemaker users
Haha, I suppose thats a legit question but still just sounds funny.
This is cool if they pull this off, safely.
Yeah i'm all for it too.
I mean who ever imagined the idea of porn flying from room to room wirelessly, a salute to you Sir
Pacemaker? The human body works off of electromagnetic pulses between the brain and the muscles. This stuff will make everybody wonky.
Chad:
And you assume that the Ph.D.s who developed this technology never thought about that? Quote from Wiki:
"By utilizing in particular the magnetic field to achieve the coupling, this method can be safe, since magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms."
Ie., you wont be cooking yourself when you charge your cell phone, in fact, that's the *exact* thing that makes this technology newsworthy.
They'll never have to change batteries again...
@Chad The human body does not work off of electromagnetic pulses otherwise everyone would spasm uncontrollably every time they were in the presence of a high powered magnet such as the one used in an MRI machine. What the human body does use is a series of electric potentials which are propagated down nerve axons and through interconnected muscle cells. Devices that can convert this electromagnetic energy to electricity have to contain a metallic coil. While pacemakers use linear metallic leads, these leads can form loops during implantation that may be affected by this technology though I doubt it. There have been pacemakers that have been designed to charge via induction so whether this technology would interfere with these pacemakers or not is a good question.
@Chad
don't the transmitting coils oscillate at a frequency that's too high to affect humans? how would scientists be able to experiment with this if it messed with their body every time they went to work.
waste of power..
I'm not an electrical engineer, but it is pretty obvious that these induction setups use specific microwave frequencies, and you have to tune the receiver to the exact resonant frequency, which is a pacemaker would not be. Additionally, I don't think it would have any effect even if the pacemaker had a resonant antennae connected to it.
You will get high from brain exposure to electric current.
Yea Nikoli Tesla
Exactly! He had working demonstrations of this when? 100 years ago. If people would have respected the guy a little more, instead of dick-riding Edison, we'd have free wireless power for the whole planet.
Then again, it's about time someone is making an effort.
@rob
Why would it have been free?
the government basically destroyed the idea of DC in the states effectively shunning tesla in the mind of our country. They even shocked elephants with outrageous levels to fool the public into believing that AC was better and safer. So, in reality, if it wasn't for our government we would have wireless charging, ponies for every child, and the American auto companies wouldnt be the most anti-progress industry in the world. Besides, Tesla was Russian and in mother russia computer charges you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power#Resonant_induction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanescent_wave_coupling
Tesla didn't come up with this 100 years ago, that would be quite an insult to 20th century science and the invention of quantum physics.
The modern method is different from (and much more sophisticated than) Tesla's concept, which would've been incredibly inefficient, impractical, and would waste tons of power.
@ilovethewaggle
umm, Tesla supported AC, Edison supported DC. AC was used to shock animals, not the other way around.
@ilovethewaggle You're waaaay wrong. Firstly, Tesla was the major proponent of AC power, not DC. If you knew how transformers work, you'd understand that running a DC current through a transformer does effectively nothing. Edison shocked cats, dogs and an elephant with AC power to try to prove that it was more dangerous than DC current, but he failed. Also, it was the American government decision to build an AC power plant to harness the power of Niagara Falls that pushed AC over the edge to win the war of the currents. Also, Tesla was Serbian, not Russian.
@ Toad - Edison's demonstrations did prove that AC was more dangerous, but AC is MUCH more convenient and practical than DC over long distances.
But yes, Tesla was awesome, a huge chunk of modern electric components can be credited to his genius.
Spooky
EXPLAIN all of that...
Indeed, what a rubbish interviewer.
i can't believe she cut away at the end. I was getting into that segment....
You worked out how to embed iPlayer videos?
*bows down*
Not iPlayer
It's BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/7895116.stm
Broadcast power is incredibly inefficient. The technology is over a hundred years old. There's a reason no one uses it.
Exactly, just while everybody else is push for more energy efficiency this yahoo comes along with a way to waste more energy.
there is a pretty good breakdown of the different wireless power technologies here:
http://www.wipower.com/PRESS_Files/WiPower%20White%20Paper.pdf
This is a cool idea; I remember reading about this a year or two ago. Any of you music geeks out there who have played an instrument near a piano while the sustain pedal is down have heard the strings vibrate in tune with the other instrument. I think this is how it was described when I first saw it. One coil is vibrating, resonating, on one frequency, sending waves of energy out into the area, and another similarly tuned coil vibrates somewhere else receiving that energy.
Or maybe something completely different and I'm totally wrong. Cool idea, though.
nope, you're right. I built a small one of these. it powered an led 5cm away. used induction fields, not em waves. brag brag brag
I want to know what the efficiency level is for this. Induction power broadcasting is in the low teens for efficiency when it was invented back with ole Tesla and has not progressed much at all. That Touchstone eats power like crazy to charge your phone so the supposed $1200 dollars you save on your plan goes towards your electricity bill.
You don't HAVE to buy the touchstone to charge your phone, you know... Also, Sprint doesn't advertise that using the touchstone in conjunction with the Pre is what saves you money. They are simply talking about the plans in comparison. I'm sure there are iPhone peripherals that waste similar, if not more amounts of electricity than the touchstone.
I can hear the advertisments already "Bringing all the "benefits" of high tension powerlines to the comfort of you livingroom! Now with added carcinogens and bad dreams!" If a radar gun causes brain cancer, and a cellphone in the lap causes your balls to shrink into raisins and fal off, what exactly happens when your house is filled with "free range" electricity? I can hear it now "mommy my tongue is tingling and I smell like bacon"
Yeah. I'm good. Thanks though. You can keep that.
It's Provably technology funded by the AMA and the oncology alliance. Which makes this the cash cow of universal healthcare. Let's see how the UK handles it.
I'll report you...
I heard also that it completely erases all magnetic data strips on credit and debit cards etc.
The Mythbusters tested the effect of magnetic fields on swipe cards a few years ago. As I recall the only way they were able to nullify the strip was with direct contact to a rare earth magnet.
Fairy dust or just...?
No matter if it is magnetic or electromagnetic, they need to get VERY close to have some kind of reasonable energy transfer. If it is magnetic, then it's just a transformer where primary and secondary coil are not connected by a core. This is rather old technology, but nevertheless now pursued by a number of companies to charge gadgets without plugging them in anywhere.
If it is electromagnetic however (video does not play here), then they may get into trouble with many countries' laws regarding the abuse of electromagnetic energy. People have found out many years ago that you can easily enlighten a lamp near a radio transmitter if you connect it to two suitably placed wires.
Venture capitalists will love it though...
so how are you supposed to do rates for this?
how do you stop people leeching off your power waves?
Oh god please don’t let this come out, Where having a hard enough time staying efficient. This would just take 20 year step backwards in that sense.
The only time wireless power, wireless charging become a worth while tool is when everyone has free energy. The days of Fusion.
The days when we never have to worry about depleting resources and insanely high energy bills.
Anyone in the Uk will tell you how shocked they where when they looked at there last power bill.
I do like how Witricity has been quiet on its actual effective % power transfer. Maybe its still really low like 15-50%
I would completely agree, but the Wifi took away 60% of it.
thats as dumb as saying:
No!!!! Dont invent cars- they are so inefficient!!
I would love something like this in public areas like pubs/bars where I could charge my mobile or netbook. However, I don't know any business that is going to give away free energy!
Also, I thought it wasn't good to keep devices continually charging, which I suspect will happen with people constantly leaving the transmitter plugged into a socket.
An OLED screen on the wall without wires would be good though.
I'm so lame, I bring my netty to the pub. LMAO Bring a plug next time you feel the need for a brew and underpowered computing; voila! free energy.
Does that picture indicate that my coffee will never be cold again, if so, want!
The Gadget Show in the UK did a feature on this way back in April...
http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/news/ortis-in-america
Like the other user said, broad cast power is inefficient, and one of the reasons why it's so inefficient, is because most of the power goes wasted. Think about it, you have a source that is broadcasting electromagnetically in all directions like a radio station, and there's only a handful of points in space that need it. The idea is about 100 years old.
But, I'm wondering even if it is inefficient, maybe it doesn't matter. You can think of the wasted energy as the fee for convenience. If the source doesn't use much power, and the devices you run don't require much energy, nor do the devices need to be powered everywhere or all the time, then maybe this idea isn't so bad after all. You can place your cell phone on a mouse pad like device and it will just "soak up the juices".
Perhaps when they figure out sustainable fusion power, or get hyper efficient solar cells, so that power is essentially free, Tesla's idea will then be practical to implement.
@Toy,
Coupled devices can be a lot more intelligent than they were in Tesla's day. I imagine you cell phone would send a signal to the transmitter when it is in use or finished charging. Further, it seems to me that there would be very little power lost in this system when not in use, even if the device is alway on, because P=V^2*R. The resistance (or in this case impedance, principle is the same) is nearly 0 if nothing is receiving the power. Only when something is receiving the power will there be an impedance in the transmission of signal.
Transmitters consume electricity whether anything is receiving it or not. In this case, generating a LARGE magnetic field eats it up like crazy. The greater the distance, the more powerful the field needs to be to gap that distance.
Did ANY of you actually read the new? It's all about the efficiency of this new technique versus common wireless power transmitting
We all know how inefficient that was at Tesla's time.
@josealb
Yes, I read the original article, and I read all the links from it. The main criticism of such technology is that the power is broadcasted. Think of shining a flashlight on a postage stamp from 3 feet away. The light will reach the stamp, but look at the the area of light that misses the stamp. That energy is wasted, and that wasted area is vastly larger than the area of the postage stamp. Neither this link nor any of the followup links address this problem, they talk about building a more efficient "flashlight". Unless they address that, this 100+ yearr old idea will still be plagued by this problem.
But, like I said originally, maybe this problem is not an issue if electricity gets super cheap, or if devices require such little power that the flashlight could have a very dim light. Neither of those conditions have been met yet. So I think this technology will be shelved and revisited later.
"Wireless power? That's awesome! Let me plug this in!...What's that loud bubbling soundOH GOD MY BRAIN"
"Ok, Erik. We have to go now. Thanks for coming on the program and boring the Sh#t out of me."
LOL.
Hideously Inefficient.
This strikes me as an exceptionally unhealthy idea. You can quote me studies all day long that say living under power lines is ok, but . . . . there are simply too many incidences of cancer and other odd anomalies for me to believe the statistics (don't forget that there was "no statistical link between smoking and cancer for years . . . ).
The human body is electrically based, so the idea of pervasive electrical current running through the air of my house is not comforting at all.
I agree with this. The idea of adding additional electromagnetic fields to a world already filled with them, be it by cellphones, computers, wireless networks, even simply the electricity passing to our plugs, does not bring me any comfort.
For this wireless energy project to be worthwhile, it would need to be able to supply enough power to charge a laptop within a reasonable time frame, or power it indefinitely, just like the standard power adapter. Naturally, more power will be needed to charge in this manner wirelessly, rather than directly. Inefficient, and simply adding to the cacophony of waves hitting out bodies.
Now, I'm not saying I'm going to take down my wireless network out of fear of bad things, however I am saying that this sort of power solution does concern me. The first idea that came to mind was that prolonged exposure to these waves by computers could mean data corruption. Other damage could come to different component, more interference. WiTricity puts out more power than a wireless network by far, same as with cellphones. If these devices have already been reported as causing headaches, interfering with medical devices, and other negative phenomena, upping the number of waves, and the power of these, does not seem to me like a good idea.
Of course, however, we all have the choice of whether or not we actually equip our house with this.
Thank god tin foil hat was invented for you doom mongers lot.
I'm investing in cancer treatment center of america
Wireless power... the end is near my friends.
Nice.
This is a brainless idea--perhaps literally. Someone's going to make a fortune selling protective headware.
sounds a Nikola Tesla experiment.... I love it!
@ilovetheweagle
russian? Nikola Tesla (not Nikoli) was NOT russian. He was born in what is today Croatia by a serbian mother.
Oh no!! A Warehouse 13 object got out into the open!!
Why don't we reinvent the idea of electricity and use light based energy transfer instead of copper based. For a wire implication fiber optics could be used. Now that would be an orgy i would like to get in on..
Welcome to the world of even more cancer patients
Wow, thats quite an invention. No ugly wires, but still all gadgets juiced up :)