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Flexible, Plastic Sheets of Power
bethr writes "Imagine never having to plug in an electronic device to get power? Researchers at the University of Tokyo have demonstrated prototype plastic sheets with copper coils that wirelessly supply power to any device that touches its surface. You just put down your laptop and the pad sends it power: 'An array of organic transistors that detect the position of the gadget and direct current flow.' Apparently, the researchers had enough time to create a spiffy video of their doll house model, complete with a mini Christmas tree, showing off the technology."
Isn't this kind of like Slashpads?
How efficient are these compared to regular adapter + cable? The lack of a magnetic core may mean your utilities bill goes up x2.
Would be neat if we could put something like this in roads. Vroom! There's already a lot of power near roads. Electric cars that charge as you drive. Refueling is automatic; cars check in at a pay station once a month for a meter read.
Why should I have X different chargers for my wireless devices? Imagine your desk if this was build into the table... your phone don't need a wire, wireless mice charge no matter where they are located, your keyboard always works, your PDA is charged when placed on the table and so is your laptop. You could have wires for all these things, but if I could avoid having x numbers of cradles and loose wires on my table, I would like that even more. And as I type this, I could imagine other things: Wireless hard disk (with wireless USB) and wireless desktop speakers, just to keep it in the nerd world and what about your desk lamp and the LCD picture frame :-) And you thought that I was done there? When a friend comes over and discovers that his phone is low on battery and your phone charger doesn't fit? Imagine your friend to be able bring "anything" without having to bring any wires at all.
This will also solve allot of the cable clutter under the table. Just think of all the things on your table that needs power and then imagine them without wires... Imagine this build into the walls - your speakers, tv and lights didn't need wires! Well, I don't know how it reacts to a nail, but there might be solutions for this too, like having a device that can sense where these things are placed, so you can go around them with your nails and screws.
Surely I can't be the only one excited about the possibilities with this kind freedom you can have?
Forgive my sophomoric understanding of the science involved here, but I have a few questions to throw out there for the grad students and pedagogues:
First, how does one define the abstraction of the pad detecting, as the parent puts forth, if an object "needs" power? What's to stop it from sending just as much power to a piece of conductive metal, say, a penny, as opposed to a cellular phone?
[As I'm sure someone will naturally assume I'm supposing that a penny is comprised entirely of highly-conductive copper and get didactic on my ass by posting the actual metallurgic composition of a penny, I'll let Wikipedia save us all the trouble: "Copper-plated Zinc: 97.5% Zn, 2.5% Cu".]
The obvious difference, anyway, between a penny and a cell phone battery is that though both have potential to carry a current, one already holds some charge and the other does not. Can this wireless power technology be made to be "smart" enough to unerringly detect the presence of an existing discrepancy in the electromagnetic field and send power in that specific direction? Aren't there several scenarios in which one could confound the machine? For instance, what's to stop someone to foolishly place, say, a bar magnet on the pad? What effect would this have?
Anyway, I'm throwing these questions out there in curiosity, and if anyone can lob a pearl or two back, much appreciated.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.