Wireless Charging, at a Distance, Moves Forward for uBeam

&gt; &quot;her career goal was to eventually find life on other planets. Instead, Ms. Perry accidentally stumbled upon something even more exciting: the ability to charge portable electronics, like cellphones and laptops, wirelessly using ultrasound&quot;<p>What&#x27;s wrong with you people, how&#x27;s charging portable electronics more exciting than finding life on another planet??

If people just understood the inverse square law and other related functions, stuff like this wouldn&#x27;t be thought of as so revolutionary. While I do see some potential for this technology as a product for those that do not care about their home electricity bill, would you really want to have less than 1% efficiency? Think of it this way: You are using electricity to generate oscillating waves in the air, directing that to a receiver, which is then turning that back in to electricity. This has some promise for extremely low power devices (think milliwatts), would you want to have a 500W power supply to charge a 5W phone?<p>References: <a href="https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/opticalandsemidev/Public/Publications/Ultrasonic%20vs.%20Inductive.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workspace.imperial.ac.uk&#x2F;opticalandsemidev&#x2F;Public&#x2F;Pu...</a> (39% efficency at 1mm, 0.013% at 10cm)<p>The best that I&#x27;ve seen (promising for IoT...) &quot;The authors showed that with these transducers data communications can be achieved at wall-transducer standoff distances of up to 10 mm. Of the many tested configurations, the authors quote the performance of a 400 mW Tx system operating across a 25 mm steel wall. This system achieved a 10 mW power transmission (0.25% efficiency) and a 1 Mb&#x2F;s data transmission rate. The authors expect that the power transmission efficiency can be increased to 1%.&quot; <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/305/1/012088/pdf/1742-6596_305_1_012088.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;1742-6596&#x2F;305&#x2F;1&#x2F;012088&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;1742-65...</a>

Very interesting, might just work.<p>They need to be careful with the frequencies though, not to screw around with the wildlife and pets around us.

This is going to be major. This space is progressing and is going to be similar to the television revolution our parents lived through. We are on early black and white right now, but this is going to be so ubiquitous for most things our kids will laugh at wires like we do at black and white.