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Walmart is experimenting with wireless power to cut battery costs
Today, Ossia announced that it has struck a deal with Walmart to explore how its wireless power technology can be used by the retail giant. Walmart is hoping to save money on power costs across its many stores. Walmart confirmed the report to Engadget. "When we find ways to lower costs it means we can lower our prices even further for customers, and that's something we're always looking to do," the company's director of public relations, Ravi Jariwalla, told Engadget. "As part of that, we been exploring new ways we might lower our power costs in our stores, clubs and facilities. One interesting technology we're excited to test is wireless power transfer from a company named Ossia, Inc. which could one day reduce and even eliminate our daily dependence on batteries and wired connections for power."
Cota by Ossia hopes to charge your phone wirelessly, no contact required
We've all heard of wireless charging before, but most solutions still require your phone to come in touch with a base station. Well, Cota is a technology that aims to power your mobile device completely wirelessly -- without any physical contact at all. Hatem Zeine, a physicist and CEO of Ossia Inc, demonstrated the technology on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt when he successfully charged his iPhone when plugged with a Cota prototype, seen above, while holding it several feet away from a charging station. It all seems like voodoo, but the secret lies in sending a magnetic charge over the same 2.4GHz spectrum that WiFi and Bluetooth already use. If you're concerned about safety, Zeine assures us that only one watt of power is transmitted -- that's a third of what cell phones already transmit. Line of sight isn't required, and Zeine claims that one station can power multiple devices at once. Just like a WiFi hotspot, you can set it so that it only works with certain devices or simply open it up so that power is available to all Cota-enabled handsets within range, which is around 30 feet.
