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 July 24th 2009 8:02AM
"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.
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 :)