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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?
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?
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?
Because there is not enough, but I suppose you could market a mobile phone which you charge by putting it in the microwave.
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Because there is not enough, but I suppose you could market a mobile phone which you charge by putting it in the microwave.
But the Tesla coil is in there.
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.
I'd be surprised if portable devices account for even 0.1% of household energy usage. Who cares? Worry about your HVAC, laundry machines, refrigerator, home server, incandescent lights, etc.
Ugh, not this again.
Let me state it clearly for the record: reducing power consumption never has and never will have any significant impact on ecological degradation as a result of pollution. The only way get rid of dirty energy is to get rid of dirty energy. We have access to incredible amounts of kinetic energy from wind and waves and thermal energy from the planetary mantle and good old sunlight, enough to outstrip anything that can be produced by coal, oil, or fission. The only reason we don't have it is that it isn't 'profitable'.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
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.
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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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.
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.
"Very" and "No". It's a transformer. There are probably 30 or so in your house right now.
> magnetic resonance which is an entirely different physical process
Hmmm. You're going to have to explain to me, a physicist, exactly what you think the difference between magnetic induction and magnetic resonance is, aside from the name. I'm all ears.
> Worry about your HVAC, laundry machines, refrigerator, home server, incandescent lights, etc.
I did. So I replaced them all, and then added a 12-panel solar array.
My electronics trickle is indeed something that worries me, it's one whole panel.
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 *
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.
I modded you up, then thought about it for a sec. I think they're talking about using evanescent waves instead of classical mutual inductance. Evanescent waves separate the near field and far field when modeling antennas, btw.
Here's an article that's heavy on buzzwords but may explain it.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I'm talking about PORTABLE electronics - the little stuff that you charge. They are talking about -plug loads-, which includes vacuum cleaners, a/v equipment, computers, etc.