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Fujitsu Eyes Wireless Gadget Charging For 2012
angry tapir writes "Researchers at Fujitsu Laboratories have developed a wireless charging system that they say can simultaneously charge a variety of portable gadgets over a distance of several centimeters without the need for cables. The system, which will be detailed at a technical conference in Japan this week, could begin appearing in mobile phones and other products as soon as 2012, the company said. Fujitsu's system is based on magnetic resonance in which power can be wirelessly sent between two coils that are tuned to resonate at the same frequency."
I believe the standard question is what is the efficiency?
transfer happens only between coils that are tuned to the same frequency
Call me a cynic, but any bets that Fujitsu will patent the technology thereby making the device only work for Fujitsu products? .. like my Fujitsu ... ... ... printer?
It would be nice if we could standardise this stuff. There are a few recharging matts* knocking around for sale at the moment, but all the systems are incompatible. Manufacturers won't build this into mobile phones etc. unless it's their own system or a standard.
Just when we're finally converging around USB as a standard charger, it looks like we're going to have half a dozen wireless charging systems (one for Fujitsu, one for Apple...).
*I do know that this isn't one of those, but it will still need infrastructure on the charged side.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Is it me, or are people having a hard time believing the technology actually exists?
Two Companies Already Have Products:
http://www.powercastco.com/
http://www.witricity.com/
NY Times Covered this stuff in 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09wirelessenergy.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
Here's CNET demoing powercast's tech in 2007!
http://cnettv.cnet.com/powercast/9742-1_53-25606.html
You can buy full blown evaluation boards online that powercast manufactures that implement wireless electricity:
http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/technologies/development-tools/rf-wireless/Pages/9660812-P1110-EVB.aspx
Why is everyone having such a hard time with this concept?
Isn't "magnetic resonance in which power can be wirelessly sent between two coils that are tuned to resonate at the same frequency." otherwise known as a radio transmitter/receiver? I recall as a young lad building a crystal set with a coil of wire and a diode, that was able to extract enough power from the local radio station to drive a small speaker. Seems like any piece of wire and a diode will extract a trickle feed of power from the RF bath we live in. Why not just use that?
So if adoption is widespread we can increase energy consumption by gadgets by 15% across the board in the name of saving "clutter".
I guess all that energy is coming from sustainable, non-polluting sources, so it's probably ok.
I'm hoping that charging everthing from USB beats it to the punch. There are already piles of cheap car apaptors, wall warts, solar etc in addition to PCs and powered hubs. One octopus-like charger with leads going in all directions beats a long power strip with a lot of wide transformer plugs. About the only downside is slow charging speeds due to low current, but a lot of the time that doesn't matter.
Building half a transformer into all of these gadgets adds weight, cost and complexity in addition to the power transfer being lossy.
A lot of devices use USB charging already so a lot of people have a charger (or more than one). It also has the advantage that any computer is a charger by default, so even if you don't have a dedicated charging unit, you can still charge your device. I charge my phone off my laptop when I travel, so I only have to bring the laptop's cord. Also, USB is a nice, standard data interface. Means that in the event the device needs data, you don't need another port.
My smartphone, my Logitech remote, our camera at work, and so on all charge from, and communicate by, USB and it is really nice.
To me, wireless charging seems stupid since it is extremely range limited. You can't have wireless charging as in "I have a charger in my kitchen and devices everywhere in the house charge." The pesky inverse square law bites that in the ass. It is something where they have to be close to touching. Ok well that just means instead of plugging in your device, you instead plug in a charger, and then set your device on it. Oh yay, that is so much better... Or not.
We just have to accept the fact that wires are here to stay for many things, power being the biggest one. You can't effectively convey power over anything other than an extremely short distance without a wire. Makes all wireless charging very silly if you asked me.
I mean think about it in relation to data. The reason I have a wireless AP is because that one AP lets me use my laptop anywhere in my house. I can roam around and get data at the same rate no matter what. That makes it worth having. However say rather than that, it was a little unit that had to connect to wired Ethernet and your laptop had to sit right next to it to get data. You could move an inch or two at most before losing signal. Would you bother? I wouldn't, I'd just connect the wire directly. It wouldn't save me any hassle to have to set the laptop right next to something connected to a wire over just connecting the wire itself.
In this day and age when we want to save energy, not mess up our environment, communications and bodies by leaking it to unwanted places? Standardize on USB charges instead and wire clutter will be kept to a minimum. I see important uses in implanted medical devices, waterproof equipment and other cases when direct physical access to the device is impractical. But for cell phones/laptops this is positively silly.
Funny, since the concern not long ago was making wall warts more efficient (switching ones did a good job on that) and working on reducing "leaky" devices like TVs and monitors that don't turn fully off (my NEC has a hard off switch for that reason). But now we can lose any and all those gains with an inefficient transfer system.
Yay.
They'll have to forgive me if I wish to stick with my nice, efficient, wired connections.
My laptop power transformer is pretty light, and to me it would be worth the extra weight to allow me to rid the ubiquitous wire.
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The power is not transmitted via an electric toothbrush type induction coil. It's transmitted through magnetic resonance which is an entirely different physical process that lets the transmission work when the charger and the device to be charged are not touching.
Watch the CNET video I linked to above and notice how utterly mystified the presenter is that the Christmas tree light branch lights are lit up and the device has no embedded power source and is not physically touching or adjacent to the power source.
This is what I mean in that people have trouble understanding this technology. They always seem to mistake it for induction charging. It's as if people somehow simply cannot believe it exists.
In other related news, they've kept up a model helicopter in the air by transferring power by laser:
http://www.brahmand.com/news/Mini-helicopter-flies-using-laser-power/4824/3/13.html
Because of the inverse cube law for wireless power transfer, I think we'll ultimately be using this kind of laser technology in future, fitted to house ceilings and street lamps. If blocking obstacles become an issue, then the receiving device can also send a purely informational laser back to the source to make sure that it's okay to beam the power laser at it, and in this case the initial source power laser can be instantly shut off, similar to those 'SawStop' table saws that shut off in milliseconds if the hand gets in the way to prevent loss of fingers.
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How safe are these? Health issues?
The standalone USB chargers have higher current, as do many of the newer PCs.
No sig today...
It's about time we started seeing waterproof phones and e-readers, and if the power is wireless and communication is wireless, there shouldn't be many more barriers to this.
Didn't the Mayans predict wireless charging millennia ago?
That's lame... now if they used a laser, ...
No wires means no physical ports. Which means no holes in the case. Which means better environmental sealing, lower manufacturing cost, less things to tangle, trip over, remember, replace, get chewed up by the cat/dog/child, clutter up the desk/bedside, and, last but not least, carry.
We are *very* close to a no-wires solution right now, and I am really excited to see it happen. Bluetooth for audio; wifi for data; inductive coupling for power; satellite GPS for location; acceleration sensors for motion; compass and gyros for orientation; standard AM, FM and even shortwave for non-networked news sources; TV of various standards... all in our hands. And you can add various sensors from there. I grew up in the 1960s, and let me tell you, these ideas are fabulous. The fact that they aren't ideas, but are perfectly practical things we can actually make, that's... wild. And the fact that a lot of them are *already* in devices (like the iPod, for instance)... well, that's just outstanding.
We just need ultracaps in the power and size ranges that batteries cover right now, and we'll *really* have taken a step forward with our portable devices. Because batteries suck. :) But ultracaps are proving to be very, very hard. :(
Wireless? You bet your ass. Bring it on.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's a temporary problem anyway, born of our (again temporary) dependence upon power sources that are very expensive, and ultimately limited - petroleum, gas, etc. We will switch to practically unlimited sources of power - we have to - and as we do, the issue of vampire power will go away. Solar, with storage; nuclear; etc. Petroleum power is convenient because its easy, but given the other sources, it's also stupid, because petroleum is also a resource for things we can't replace.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
People that live near high tension towers have put up coils to suck up stray power for years. The power companies frown on this, but my feeling is that it makes up for shortening peoples lives because of living next to these things.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Anyone know if they're looking into using this sort of thing where it might be useful such as large equipment with bulky connections or Electric Vehicles?
Won't be long before someone will complain it is causing them headaches or some other medical problem.
Because of the inverse cube law for wireless power transfer,
That only applies for broadcast, this is [almost] unicasting. Last I checked the technology used phased arrays.
If blocking obstacles become an issue, then the receiving device can also send a purely informational laser back to the source to make sure that it's okay to beam the power laser at it, and in this case the initial source power laser can be instantly shut off, similar to those 'SawStop' table saws that shut off in milliseconds if the hand gets in the way to prevent loss of fingers.
Even if laser power made sense (which it does not) this is not the way you would do it. You would add a data stream to the power laser, just as the signal on a sawstop system is gathered from the blade itself and not from a separate sensor. Data stream is affected, then power is being interrupted. It's either that or basically surrounding the power beam with the informational beam, or an array thereof. Either way it's a bad, stupid idea to do laser power any way other than over fiber, in which context it is useful for optical isolation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is a well-trodden area-- explored by many folks, starting with Tesla. Unfortunately there are several very basic phisical showbunglers if not showstoppers.
Issues that are fundamental to electromagnetic radiation:
(1) If you send out EM waves, the efficiency of the antennas is like 1% at low frequencies, wasting 99.99% of the power. If you use microwave frequencies, the antennas are much more efficient, but so is your body's ability to absorb the stuff, which is not a good thing.
(2) If you try this near-field coupled resonator thing (first tried in 1886), you son find out it has very limited range, and you need coils as large as the distance to be spanned, and the power drops off as the square of the distance when near, as the cube of the distance a little bit farther away.
These are basic Maxwell's equation impediments that are unlikely to ever be overcome.
This isn't by any means anything special...It's just inductive charging. Electric tooth brushes have been using it for awhile. Actually the HTC Evo has an inductive charging set you can get. So...inductive charging has already come to some mobile phones...
suprock technologies already provides hardware that can do this, link : http://suprocktech.com/ video at the bottom...wireless power transfer platform...perfect for enthusiasts just looking to utilize this technology in their own project
So you create a magnetic field perpendicular to a coil and it induces a current which charges a battery. Wasn't Tesla doing that like 70 years ago?
What do I need wireless charging eyes? I already have two wired ones, and they work perfectly.
I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one.
sudo ergo sum
I saw this same concept demo'd on the TED podcast by an american company over a year ago: http://blog.ted.com/2009/08/25/wireless_electr/
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The Palm Pre and Pixi have optional wireless chargers, and as I had a Pre, I can say it worked great and the charge time of wired vs wireless was almost the same. With a new back holding the charging coil, the weight was almost nothing on the phone side. Put one in my car as a mobile docking station, and loved it. Now if they only put a EVO sized screen on a Pre it would be perfect. http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/handheld/categories/palm/1/accessories/FB300AA%2523AC3;HHOJSID=hq1gMTPGvpKRTN0tQbjCQ3rSrlHvwSLRkPkz5579v79zvbKdqTJL!1977121832
Nope. You're thinking 60 Hz power transfer. That's not what is going on in any reasonable design. High frequencies let you build high-Q coils that are physically very small. Likewise, wall-warts with power transformers are old tech; decent wall warts are now switching power supplies. Which are perfectly suitable for powering a compact sine wave generator -- at the other end, in the device, you basically need a coil, a small cap, a bridge rectifier, and a battery (or an ultracap, depending on the run-time you're looking for and the power consumption of the device. Of course, if we see some of the developments in ultracaps that have been bandied about, batteries will be history.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ever since the Betamax/VHS war most Japanese companies seem to have learned that allowing others to use your technology is generally a good thing. Sony themselves made sure other people could make BluRay players and discs right from the start, and the Playstation line has had unofficial 3rd party controllers from day one.
On the other hand American companies seem to want to lock you in. Apple block 3rd party charging cables for the iPhone, and even prevent licensed products made for older models from working with newer ones (e.g. iPod 5G speakers not working on the iPhone despite the connector being the same). Microsoft used crypto to prevent the creation of unofficial controllers.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Magnetic resonance is much more "powerful" (flexible and works at a distance) than the inductive charging which looks like becoming more common now there is a Qi standard http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/consortium-announces-wireless-power-prototypes-9405 Futjitu's not the only compnay in this - Witricity demonstrated the tech a year ago or so http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/news-green-it/wireless-power-promises-to-replace-batteries-and-wires-1461 Here's eWEEK europe's take on the Fujitsu launch http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/fujitsu-develops-power-transmitter-for-mobiles-cars-9703
The power laser has to have some way of knowing that the target device can 'see' it. If it's a one way process, I'm not sure how that be achieved at all.
You say it's a bad idea, but it's ideal for tiny devices which may require only a small surface area to receive energy. At the least, one may have multiple points of energy absorption so that we can use say 10 weaker lasers to power the device instead of one super-powerful one.
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The power laser has to have some way of knowing that the target device can 'see' it. If it's a one way process, I'm not sure how that be achieved at all.
Easy, send back a radio signal when you can see it. I kind of left that out in my rush to get a comment banged out though.
You say it's a bad idea, but it's ideal for tiny devices which may require only a small surface area to receive energy.
Not really, since the efficiency is so crap. It's far worse than using phased array wireless RF power distribution so far. The equipment has a shorter life, too, although I don't think that particularly matters in this context.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"