Maybe we have a future with no charging cords and just being at home and your phone is automatically charging from your “Wireless Charging Router”.
Sorry if this sounds stupid lol. I like to imagine weird ways we can use technology.
Yes. Google far-field wireless power.
It’s not really ready for prime time, and there are a lot of things still needing to line up for it to become ready, but it’s coming eventually.
So lots of hand waving comments here which are only mostly right. The key thing they are missing is that there are multiple wireless power technologies for different power levels, some of which are already commercial and available to buy!
Powercast (www.powercastco.com) has multiple techs now that they either developed or licensed and they have integrated that into multiple FCC approved products. The Samsung TV remote uses both a small solar cell and their wireless energy harvester to make a remote that you never have to replace the batteries. Powercast also sells a joycon controller grip that has a battery with wireless trickle charging (done with playing for the day, leave the grip within 1-2 feet of the base station and it charges overnight). They also have a lot of other currently used applications that are not public (I’ve seen functions with low power charging over 1 meter distance), but if you ever go to CES you can check out their booth.
Another option is Ossia (www.ossia.com) which uses a tech to monitor for obstructions (people, pets, tables, etc) and then steers the power beam around to be able to provide the most power and the least power loss. As another user posted this requires a lot of trust because the power levels they use could cause injury, but they apparently did pass FCC testing. They also are commercial.
Airbrite (https://www.airbritelighting.com/) is a product commercialized from Etherdyne tech (https://www.etherdyne.net/) that is your standard inductive coil with some improvements. This is shorter range power than the other two but can provide much higher power with zero risk to biological parties. The video on Etherdyne’s website shows one mat powering a monitor, charging a phone, a lamp, and possibly charging a laptop at the same time. That being said, the products need to be within a coil’s field and almost completely in plane to get full power transfer.
This is possible, but via a slightly different mechanism. Using piezoelectric sensors that effectively vibrate to harvest energy.
My brother worked for a large Korean tech company that was evaluating similar technology for consumer grade application (think whole room wireless charging…) Another aspect they were looking into was using low frequency sound waves to emulate the sensation of a physical button so that washer/dryers could have virtual knobs that feel analog.
Likely not something scalable at this point, but in theory it is possible.
It can, actually be done. It’s just inefficient and requires too much trust.
You either do a general broadcast of power. This is incredibly inefficient, at any real range. To get power to the edges, the power near the transmitter will likely be enough to cook your cat.
The other method is directed. You basically put out a power beam that improves efficiency. Unfortunately, you also now have a directable energy weapon in your living room. I wouldn’t trust something capable of cooking my brain, while I’m sat on the sofa, if it gets hacked.
Neither are likely viable for general use, though both could be useful under certain conditions.
IIRC this was kind of the dream of either Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison (I forgot which one). But no, it’s not really possible, as others have said.
This was what Tesla Coils did. They allowed for the wireless transmission of power. It was Tesla’s utopian dream to provide free power to all.
not safely.
You world effectively be living in a microwave if it provided enough power for everything
If you want to drive your vacuum cleaner by wireless energy, you’ll probably need energy levels in the air that would also kill flies and mosquitoes. And pets and people, too.
You had me at the first half
We just need a targeting system to detect the bugs (maybe use LiDAR?) and shoot them with high power pulsed IR lasers. There’s absolutely no way this idea could go wrong.
Someone did this already. His safeguard is that the laser he used is placed on the wardrobe and only covers the top 10cm of the room
Disney Research actually developed a whole-room wireless power system some years ago. they called it Quasistatic Cavity Resonance.
The energy in a wave is inversely proportional to distance squared. In other words if you double the distance you get one quarter of the power.
For information transfer like wifi this does not matter as long as it’s enough to be detected.
For power transfer this becomes a huge problem quickly because it’s the energy itself that is being transferred.
In other words to meaningfully power stuff that is a just couple meters away you would need a source so powerful that it would either kill you or all the electronic devices in its vicinity. A nice styropyro video to illustrate https://youtu.be/6TgrtA2wKaM?t=144
It’s also important to note thst the increased power required significantly better cooling- on both devices.
Nikola Tesla did a lot of research on inductive transmission and found it was basically useless for high power and long range. (Interestingly, he wanted to create a shield that would fry anything metallic coming near it. Like artillery shells and airplanes. Besides the power demands being utterly ridiculous, it could have conceivably worked.)
Better use of power than LLMs.
Can people feel in a strong electromagnetic field? Is it safe?
Yes, but it’s incredibly slow, wasteful and, unsafe. Companies have tried making hardware that does this at a room level, but have largely failed because it’s so wasteful and slow.
Eevblog has a bunch of videos debunking these things https://youtu.be/2rSQnRV5ztI
Basically, yes, depending on how much electricity/energy you’re talking about
Ok, blue skying here… On this YouTube channel I scope out once in a while, the YouTuber built a “wireless” desk. In that, the accessories and items you’d find on an average desk were wirelessly powered. The lamp, the mouse, keyboard, coffee warmer…
The key components were a large induction loop, goes around the circumference of table; and some decently small dongles. Now, granted, the setting up process involved a opening up the mouse and inserting a single, and ‘deeper’ DIY things like that.
But, a scaled up implementation of this, for a house… just sounds…exciting
This is the only real solution. I would imagine a whole series of induction loops, that activate by sensing there is a device to power. Toaster from the kitchen can be moved to the table to do breakfast, put your phone down anywhere and it charges, vacuum the house wirelessly and without a battery. Take the espresso machine to your home office when working an all nighter.
Sure just go ahead and stick a toothpick in the latch to your microwave and hit go.
Real answer right here though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n42nWBy3lWI
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