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Ultrasonic Power Transfer Investigated Using Data From uBeam Patent Filings (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: Transmitting power through the air using sound above the range of human hearing: that's the gist of ultrasonic power transfer. The promise is that you can sit in a coffee shop and use your phone like normal while it's recharged by invisible waves of energy. That's a future we all want — and one that uBeam has been promoting, but hasn't backed it up with proof. Physics is a cruel mistress, and this is no exception. Using the data found in uBeam's patent filings you can see that ultrasonic power transfer is a brutal engineering challenge. It's probably not impossible, but looking at what it would take for a widespread rollout of the tech makes it highly improbable.
...But my EYES and EARS are bleeding.
Letter To Iran
When are people going to learn that pushing power through air, in any form, is horribly inefficient and impractical for anything more than a science experiment?
it would already have been done. Obviously did not RTFA, but this probably has very bad efficiency and a lot of the power gets lost.
Is the only thing that is efficiently capable of pushing power through space, and even that is very quickly losing sight of everything inside itself.
pp reindeer
People who think that you can run your entire house off a generator connected to a bicycle, or that putting a propeller connected to a generator on the hood of your car is 'free energy', are the same idiots who believe that 'wireless charging' is a good idea. The Inverse Square Law fully applies to any sort of wireless charging because physics works, and no amount of wishful thinking or marketing bullshit is going to change that. Sitting there saying 'But it works, we have it right now' means Jack Shit because it's all so wasteful of energy as to be worse than useless. Just plug your gods-be-damned phone into a USB port, let it charge, and fucking get over it already. Oh, and memo to those of you who want 'wireless charging' because you keep annihilating the USB connector on your phone: Try being a little more careful instead of looking for a workaround for how clumsy and careless you are with your expensive electronics, and stop encouraging retarded marketing people who keep pushing for this rediculous and unnecessary technology, it's just distracting developers and engineers from working on things that actually matter.
Piffle! They also said man will never fly! You are all Luddites. Computers got better, therefore everything will get better. This is why we have the 20 hour work week and supersonic passenger transport today.
Any technology which attempts to push power though a transmission medium where you have to worry about the "Inverse of the Square" of the distance is going to fail on it's face. Sound though air is such a problem. Magnetic and electric fields though air/vacuum is another. Power transfer may be possible, but the amount of losses means it will never be practical unless you have HUGE amounts of power to waste.
In this case you may not be able to hear ultra sonic frequencies, but that does NOT mean it cannot harm your hearing at the SPL's required to get any kind of power transferred.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Moo. XD
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Assuming the project isn't essentially fraudulent, and is technically feasible- why? It would have worse performance than inductive charging and would require a specific alignment of an extra peripheral towards the sound source.
Anyway, there's another link in the article to a take-down of the product that goes over basic physics and sound level safety requirements that suggest this project is fraudulent. One thing you do see in there, however, is talk about Ubeam's 25 year old CEO, Meredith Perry. A google search quickly reveals she's an attractive young lady.
Quite frankly I think she's a huckster, and is using her charisma, beauty, and the latest 'women in tech' craze to bilk a few investors who have money to blow. Sure, there might be a few engineers performing 'research'- fiddling with components and actually transmitting power with ultrasound in a carefully controlled and isolated environment. Their function is to provide Ms. Perry with legal cover. They'll do work obstinately in the relevant line of investigation, while knowing full well that the final finished product can never be delivered for a variety of reasons. They'll issue reports saying 'the next obstacle to overcome is....' knowing that obstacle is insurmountable. And the entire time, Ms. Perry will be collecting an excellent salary for a 25 year old, and may even get bought out by some fool.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
i feel like the obvious question is, why use ultrasonic frequencies that lose half their power in a meter of air, when we could be using ultra low frequencies that travel much further before losing power - and are also much better at penetrating obstacles? something like 5hz or 10hz?
anyone care to dig into the physics or biology of why that wouldn't work either?
I realize I used 'obstinately' when I meant 'ostensibly.' oops
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Doesn't "sound" very pet-friendly to me. Perhaps some evil genius is looking for a way to fund the development of his doomsday device.
I'd love to see this implemented. Then I'd get some popcorn and stay the heck away from the area cause once the soundwaves bounce off enough surfaces, they'll lose enough energy to fall into hearing range, and suddenly you feel like you're back in the 80s, surrounded by TVs with failing transformers.
we wouldn't need to be discussing this shit...
n/t
looking at the size of various sound waves, it looks like for instance a 50hz soundwave has a wavelength somewhere around 30 feet. yet that is within the range of human hearing - somehow our tiny eardrums are able to hear 30ft soundwaves? so its a little more complicated than you make it out to be
If their beam-steering is actually something new and quick, then it might have applications elsewhere - medical ultrasound is a pain in the ass partly because the tech has to fool around a lot to get a good image. If you could steer the beam and do the ultrasound equivalent of auto-focus, you could make some ultrasound studies quite a bit faster and therefore easier on the patient.
But in a Starbucks? Forget it. Install 5V USB outlets on every table and call it a day instead.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
LOL
I can only imagine how dogs would react to high-frequency, high-energy beams of audio. It would be like a dog-whistle on steroids!
(for that matter, being one of those freaks who can still hear to 20kHz in their late 30s, I'm not so keen on the idea myself)
Of course it will work; this is exactly what an ultrasound transducer does; it converts electrical energy to acoustic energy via mechanical strain in response to said electrical energy, then converts acoustic energy back to electrical energy via mechanical strain when impacted by the returning acoustic bounceback. Well and truly settled issue. The problem is the power loss over distance, as has already been pointed out. So while it will work, it will work poorly, be expensive, and is overly complicated. It is an idea backed by a fundamentally sound theory, but like so many the practical application is unworkable.
If service dogs for the blind are truly affected by this technology, that would seem likely to block access by blind people to places having this "service", and thus be illegal.
Isn't this similar to what Nikola Tesla wanted to do in order to provide free electricity to the masses?
How can this be patented? Prior art must be all over the place.
Love sees no species.
Well it worked for Carly Fiorina.
If only some genius, some Einstein, or another, had come up with a way to... absorb photons and convert them directly into electrical energy...
If only these smart devices had a large, flat surface somewhere on them not being used for anything that could somehow house one of these ... panel things to absorb stray photons...
If only someone were clever enough to figure out how to... combine these technologies...
What a shame we don't have any of these things.