Yep, thats right. Wireless electricity: How long before we hear about people piggybacking other peoples' electricity We'll be seeing caravans on every street corner...
Yeah, good luck with that, it works fine in theory and in carefully controlled environments but everything will set it off and make it send the wrong frequency to a device or your mobile will suddenly receive 150V through the antenna.
And lets not forget the awful efficiency compared to a cable - imagine how much energy could be wasted by making everything wireless like this...
This is quite old news. We have been able to do this for at least 10 years it's only recently it's become efficient enough to be considered.
Have fun spreading your energy out in a sphere. Intensity decreases according to an inverse cube law. The tech works in the lab, long way from working in the home.
My laptop audio gets electrical interference when it's plugged into the wall with the power adaptor (versus running off the battery). I can't imagine the amount of signal interference you'd get with something like this. The only way you'd get efficiency is if both coils were very close to each other, and had very focused fields, at which point it would lose any possible advantage over just plugging it in. We make a big deal about efficiency in everything, and 16ga copper has negligable resistance at 6 foot lengths, So we're talking about replacing a 99.9% efficient wire with a 40-45% efficient magnet to save us the arduous backbreaking chore of plugging in our computers. Hah, I like the analogy of a singer shattering glass. Other than the fact that both involves waves and resonant frequencies, there's no similarity. a 60hz EM wave behaves WAY differently than a 10khz sound wave.
Its a good idea and im sure one day it will happen but I bet there are health risks involved. The wireless signal causes cancer etc.
I was going to point out the same thing! Induction = resonance? Gosh, someone at the BBC forgot to take high school physics. I don't see wireless electricity taking over anytime soon. Only a few years ago people believed that cell phones could be powered by satellites. CRUSHED!
Tesla invented a similar device, but with more of a distance in mind. Think he tested his system at like 10 miles or something. Cool tech, but one must wonder about the ambient problems of radiation?
I'm fairly certain this is similar technology that has been charging my toothbrush for years, sure it has a stand but there are no actual plugs or anything to plug in... (the toothbrush to the stand)
Prolly has a metal contact on the base and the toothbrush.. I heavily doubt they'd work wireless charging into something like a toothbrush Imagine the possibilities of zapping your friend while he's in the shower though...
Nope - no metal involved whatsoever, for obvious reasons. It's an induction coupling - works through plastic, and means that the electric toothbrush is completely sealed. See here.
As gareth says it's plastic and entirely sealed.(i was confused how it worked one day so I wiki'd it) It seems like every new innovation these days has to be hyped up and OMG IT'LL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!!1!!! granted I appreciate the work but I'm just bored that everything gets hyped up to death these days...
LOL @ all the nay-sayers. If you bothered to read the article, it said they already have 90% efficiency, which is pretty good going. They can run a 60W bulb now, so presumably they could easily power a cordless phone. Also, woof, you can get directional antennae, can't you? That's precisely what a high-gain antenna is, so what's stopping them using directional charging coils? I think intel made this press release because they have some cool, working tech that they intend to bring to market at some point.
It's not that bad an analogy really - for a layman to understand things like induction you need to find a common, simpler, yet similar principle to give people an idea what's going on. Besides, Resonance and Induction are very similar things really - specific frequencies causing an effect without physical contact.
I have a similar toothbrush, it's a simple transformer with the primary coil and core in the stand and the secondary coil wound round the hole in the brush bottom. Liquid pumps are also around with no need for a shaft (with leak-prone seal) joining rotor and motor, the magnetic field to spin the rotor works through a plastic wall. But these devices only transmit a few millimetres. Longer distances at high efficiency = impressive.
I didn't know that certain toothbrushes were charged in this manner. Cool! I see major flaws that would prohibit this technology from taking off. For one, it might add bulk to a product. Toothbrushes are used maybe twice a day for about a minute each. Cell phones will have to undergo much more aggressive charging. How is such a system protected against abuse? What is to prevent people from bringing all of their gadgets to their driveway to mooch off of a neighbor's charging system? Or the mall. Let's all eat at the food court and let our devices charge. One more comment: WIRELESS USB. Guess what, it's not taking off. That just shows that just because something can become wireless doesn't mean people will embrace the change. I cannot see the correllation even when I think about it in simpler terms. Induction: one person talking and teaching to another, and the other person listening and learning. Resonance: one person talking to another, and the other person getting angrier and angrier until their rage explodes.
Yeah, on second thoughts, it doesn't spread out in a sphere, but it's not easy to making a directional antannae: But....