6 ms·

Ultrasonic Power Transfer Investigated Using Data from uBeam Patent Filings

63 points by szczys 11y ago

api 11y ago
"even some high-profile investors that include [Mark Cuban] have not seen the uBeam working." I don't understand how people can raise money like this. Investors usually like to actually see evidence that you are actually doing something, right? Right?
- joshu 11y ago
  It really depends, but personally, yeah, I like to see proof behind extraordinary claims.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I've seen a few requests come in where I really wondered if the subject investors had any technical knowledge at all. Investor scams are unfortunately rather common. As soon as secrecy, a breakthrough and a very large market coincide the gullible and their money are soon parted. I personally don't think this is a bad thing because it keeps me employed, at the same time you'd wish that this sort of thing would stop because it most likely hinders genuine breakthroughs from being given the attention they deserve. Some of those get recycled a few years or decades later so not all is lost but still, a few cold fusions and AI winters and the tech industry as a whole suffers. As for the uBeam, ultrasound is a strange medium to choose for this particular job, ultrasound is fickle, has a ton of side effects, isn't particularly efficient and interferes with living creatures in all kinds of un-desirable ways. Going the electromagnetic route would seem to be the first thing to try (and some companies are doing this and have products, maybe not 'miracle class' but they'll do the job they're designed to). The best bet for getting rid of the charger cord are a strong reduction in required power for the phones, better battery technology, maybe micro fuel cells or some other exotic conversion technology. Populating the world with ultrasonic transmitters with about the same range as the charge cord they replace seems to fix one minor inconvenience by replacing it with a much larger one, not a company I'd bet on.
  - api 11y ago
    With the opening of seed investment to the general public, I unfortunately think you're going to see a huge increase in professional investor scams. I fully expect organized crime to get involved. Of course anyone can go blow their money at a casino and with a much lower odds of return than investing on AngelList, so I'm not sure it's an overall bad thing. Still I am concerned about loss of signal in noise and about 'winters' as you say.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      In plenty of places seed investments have been open to the general public just about forever and as far as I know there have not been any major differences between the number of scams purported there versus in countries where investors need to be accredited. Crowdfunding is currently doing a great job educating people on the risks of putting money up for vapourware but since those are not investments per se there is still a gap in that education that will surely be filled once the stops are pulled. Organized crime is already involved in investments, look no further than the LPs of some of the funds that have high visibility. That's a far quicker way to get a return than to bilk a few million out of the pockets of the gullible public at large.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    >The best bet for getting rid of the charger cord are a strong reduction in required power for the phones, better battery technology, maybe micro fuel cells or some other exotic conversion technology. Or, and this is really out there, larger batteries? Which elfin focus group told everyone that a phone's weight should be measured in carats? I'd sacrifice a few extra ounces for a doubling in battery life without adding new devices.
- tlb 11y ago
  Empirically, "tech not actually possible" is a relatively rare reason for startups to fail. Other reasons are much more common. So putting a lot of effort into verifying this doesn't affect an investor's return much. Also, a common trajectory is shooting for something impossible, but discovering possible and useful things along the way which turn into great businesses. So even if you're 100% sure the idea is impossible, it might still be a good investment.
  - api 11y ago
    Empirically, very few people lose races due to broken legs.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  I'm picture a Demo Day for the incubator hosting uBeam, and also Theranos. It's very awkward, just a big crowded room with people looking around at each other, no one saying a word, interrupted only by the occasional "Can we see a demo?" or "Has this been verified?", and the CEO runs up on stage and says "No" and sits down again. After about an hour and half of this staring contest, there's a mad rush of investors throwing open their checkbooks.
- dikdik 11y ago
  I believe the founder runs in the Summit Series circles. I don't have anything against the organization, but it seems to attract a lot of trust-fund types.
Someone 11y ago
http://ubeam.com http://ubeam.com: "The most recent paper to investigate the safety of ultrasound was just published [...] Of note is that this study used energy levels to tissue that were orders of magnitude higher than levels that uBeam’s system uses." The abstract at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041624X15001973 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041624X15...: "Demonstrated in vitro, 0.6 W of transcutaneous ultrasound power transfer to an implant.[...] with an average RF input to electrical charging efficiency of 20%" So, at best, 3W is "orders of magnitude higher than levels that uBeam’s system uses". That may charge your remote, but not your phone.
- Retric 11y ago
  iPhone 5 has a 5.45wh battery. If you can place a "speaker" in your room and add 0.3w * 8 h while you sleep that's ~44% charge every night. Which could be fairly useful. Up the power or assume people spend more than 8h a day in there bedroom and plenty of people would spend up to say 200$ to have one less thing to worry about.
  - szczys 11y ago
    Sure, as long as it's right in the focus of the beam. If that means putting it in one particular spot, is there any benefit over inductive chargers? That method would be faster and more efficient.
    - knodi123 11y ago
      Hehe, well, ubeam says it literally has mechanical aiming mechanisms that locate power recipients and focus directly at them. So, practical and maintenance limitations aside, they have definitely answered that criticism.
      - GeorgeOu 11y ago
        If you read the FAQ on eevblog, 100 KHz frequency ultrasound will lose 90% of its energy at 2 meter range or just over 6 feet. That energy goes to heating the air that the sound travels through. Then you have to contend with any orientation offset. If the receiver is off by 90 degrees or more, there is zero energy received. If your hand blocks half the surface area, that's another 50% power loss. If you boost the power above 140 dB safety limit, you can burn your hands or cause other problems. At 140 dB at 2 meters, the theoretical best case with 100% efficiency transmitter and receiver will deliver 0.85 watts. You obviously lose even more than that. http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/
rootedbox 11y ago
If you have a room filled with speakers basically.. You are going to have phasing issues.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  And you're going to have the sum and the difference frequencies to deal with as well if the transmitters aren't perfectly synchronized. And those differences may very well be within the audible range.
  - beamatronic 11y ago
    If nothing else, now you've created a new type of Active Denial System
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Phasing, and sympathetic resonance. With 10+ speakers pointing in constantly random direction, in an environment as changing as a starbucks, I would assume that somewhere something might start vibrating at a frequency well within human/cat/dog hearing. Just pray it isn't one of your fillings.
jimrandomh 11y ago
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/125891 http://predictionbook.com/predictions/125891 (entered back in July)
sandworm101 11y ago
If these people want to milk some billionaires for whom shelling a few million is easier than taking the time to understand a technology, I say more power to them. So long as they aren't receiving taxpayer support, nor draining the lifesaving of retires, then they can sell their dream for as long as dreamers have deep pockets. Is it really any worse than homoeopathy? A fool and his money.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > Is it really any worse than homoeopathy? That depends on whether or not the inventors are aware of the fact that their tech likely will never work. In that case it is fraud. In the other case it is simply some group of people that are very much ready to believe their own story and successfully transmitting that enthusiasm to investors. I've seen a couple of cases like that and it always makes me sad that reality will shatter the dream ('wouldn't it be nice if?', yes, but that does not automatically mean that it is possible...). More often than not charisma plays an important role in these exercises in wishful thinking. If the purveyor of new, unproven tech is aware that it does not work there is yet another class of character, the ones that think they're only 'faking it until it will inevitably work'. Just one more little kink to work out and then all the reasons to fake it will disappear. The only ones I have no compassion with are the cold hearted fraudsters who dream up their schemes knowing full well they'll never deliver. Those are - fortunately - quite rare.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    I am reminded of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
petra 11y ago
Why don't startbucks really buy usb charging ports or usb charging mats and put it on their shops , if that's so important ? why don't anybody big do it?
- bsder 11y ago
  Because they don't want to encourage people to stay longer than they already are.
  - zemvpferreira 11y ago
    Actually, I think every Starbucks in the Bay Area has induction chargers built into several tables (along with a number of charging dongles to choose between for your particular phone connector): http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/starbucks-pma-wireless-charging-launched/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/starbucks-pma-wireless-c...
    - Animats 11y ago
      Their active area is so small that an ordinary USB-A power outlet would be more useful. You have to plug the rigid coil into your device, then place it exactly over the charging circle.
      - zemvpferreira 11y ago
        Induction is a very practical solution for when you don't have your USB charging cable with you. Plus, who's going to steal the coil to use at home? And it's a pretty magical experience when you use it.
        Animats 11y ago
        That your phone can get position info from satellites is magical. That you can bring two halves of a transformer together and get power would not have surprised an electrician from a century ago.
      - 11y ago
hatsunearu 11y ago
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/ Here's an extremely in-depth analysis of this new snake oil.
Animats 11y ago
Those articles mention uBeam's patent filings, but don't actually cite them. You can look at their patent applications.[1] The overall system is described in their patent application #20120300593. This shows the overall plan: focus big transmitting transducers tightly on small receiving transducers. This resulted in a patent, #9094111. But to get the patent, they had to narrow the main claim to include "a receiver communications device adapted and configured to send input to the sender, the input comprising a power requirement that causes the sender to change a dwell time of the sender on the receiver". That's not an essential component of such a system, so it's not a broad patent. There's an application on beam-steering, #20140281655. That's a known technology, and the USPTO has sent back a non-final rejection based on prior art. But that tells us the plan - big phased array of ultrasonic transducers aimed at a tiny target. Direct line of sight is necessary between transmitting array and pickup array. How could they generate 155dB of ultrasonic energy? They applied for a patent on their transmit transducer, application #20140265727. That has an image of the sending transducer. It's a piezoelectric device with a silicon membrane, with a vacuum behind it. (The vacuum in back is to avoid pumping half the energy back into the device itself.) A "thin film" piezoelectric element makes the membrane vibrate. Devices like that have been built before, and the USPTO accordingly just sent them a final rejection. There's no new feature there which allows generation of more audio power than existing devices. So assume their device has performance roughly comparable to existing devices. Here's a product list from American Piezo, a commercial supplier of high-power air ultrasonic transducers.[2] Their highest power unit that transmits into air is 119dB. uBeam is claiming 155dB. That's 36dB more, or 4000 times as much power. That device needs 30V into 2K ohms to power it, or about half a watt. So uBeam's transmitter would need about 2 kilowatts, comparable to a small clothes dryer, spread over a large number of transmitting transducers. An array 64 square would do it. The American Piezo transducer is 16mm across, so the transmitting array needs to be about a square meter. That's a big transmitting array, with 4000 elements, each with its own drive electronics. All that energy, or as least as much as they can focus, gets aimed at a tiny target. The parent article discusses the attenuation problem. This gets worse with frequency.[4] Measured values of attenuation in air at 1MHz at 20C are between 160-165dB/m. This is huge. 1m from the transmitter, all the power is gone, used to heat the air. uBeam wants to operate in the megahertz range, but no way will that work. At 50KhZ, where most air ultrasonic systems work, attenuation is only 2dB/m. Their demo system (with about 1 foot range) used off the shelf 40KHz transducers. This thing might work in the 50-100KHz range, with a rather large and expensive transmitter array, when the target device was facing the transmitter. Safety remains an issue; if they actually built a 155dB system, they'd have a steerable ultrasonic welder. They could potentially build a nice demo system. Build a meter square array of off the shelf transducers running in the 50-100KHz range and mount it in a large picture frame. Cover it with speaker grille cloth, maybe with a picture silk-screened on so it looks like a framed picture. Have it scan at low power until a cooperating device reports a signal. Then focus the beam and turn the power up to full. It's not going to be totally silent, because some harmonics will get through and some objects in the target area will vibrate with the ultrasonics and resonate at a lower frequency. But it probably wouldn't be noticeable at a noisy trade show. You probably don't want to be near the focus of this thing. [1] http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/ubeam-inc/ http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/ubeam-inc/ [2] https://www.americanpiezo.com/standard-products/air-transducers.html https://www.americanpiezo.com/standard-products/air-transduc... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_welding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_welding [4] http://www.ndt.net/article/ultragarsas/63-2008-no.1_03-jakevicius.pdf http://www.ndt.net/article/ultragarsas/63-2008-no.1_03-jakev...
rootedbox 11y ago
One other thing.. Look at all there demo videos, and pictures. The size of the amp they are using to produce this volume of sound is pretty insane. So.. 1. This is going to add to your monthly electric bill considerably. 2. I wonder what kind of EM those amps are putting out.
rjdagost 11y ago
When I first heard of uBeam and their goal I did some back of the envelope calculations. Setting aside the safety issues (which are not settled, start-up CEO claims to the contrary), the biggest problem is conversion efficiency. Using some optimistic assumptions about conversion efficiencies and beam steering accuracy, I don't see how they're going to achieve even a 10% net conversion efficiency at useful distances. So I've been very skeptical about the prospects of success, yet I am very interested to be proven wrong on some of my assumptions. But the longer this product launch gets stretched out the more skeptical I get that this will ever be a product that anyone would want to buy. This is starting to feel like Theranos- the time has come to put up some real evidence.

63 points by szczys 11y ago

api 11y ago

"even some high-profile investors that include [Mark Cuban] have not seen the uBeam working." I don't understand how people can raise money like this. Investors usually like to actually see evidence that you are actually doing something, right? Right?

joshu 11y ago
It really depends, but personally, yeah, I like to see proof behind extraordinary claims.
jacquesm 11y ago
I've seen a few requests come in where I really wondered if the subject investors had any technical knowledge at all. Investor scams are unfortunately rather common. As soon as secrecy, a breakthrough and a very large market coincide the gullible and their money are soon parted. I personally don't think this is a bad thing because it keeps me employed, at the same time you'd wish that this sort of thing would stop because it most likely hinders genuine breakthroughs from being given the attention they deserve. Some of those get recycled a few years or decades later so not all is lost but still, a few cold fusions and AI winters and the tech industry as a whole suffers. As for the uBeam, ultrasound is a strange medium to choose for this particular job, ultrasound is fickle, has a ton of side effects, isn't particularly efficient and interferes with living creatures in all kinds of un-desirable ways. Going the electromagnetic route would seem to be the first thing to try (and some companies are doing this and have products, maybe not 'miracle class' but they'll do the job they're designed to). The best bet for getting rid of the charger cord are a strong reduction in required power for the phones, better battery technology, maybe micro fuel cells or some other exotic conversion technology. Populating the world with ultrasonic transmitters with about the same range as the charge cord they replace seems to fix one minor inconvenience by replacing it with a much larger one, not a company I'd bet on.
- api 11y ago
  With the opening of seed investment to the general public, I unfortunately think you're going to see a huge increase in professional investor scams. I fully expect organized crime to get involved. Of course anyone can go blow their money at a casino and with a much lower odds of return than investing on AngelList, so I'm not sure it's an overall bad thing. Still I am concerned about loss of signal in noise and about 'winters' as you say.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    In plenty of places seed investments have been open to the general public just about forever and as far as I know there have not been any major differences between the number of scams purported there versus in countries where investors need to be accredited. Crowdfunding is currently doing a great job educating people on the risks of putting money up for vapourware but since those are not investments per se there is still a gap in that education that will surely be filled once the stops are pulled. Organized crime is already involved in investments, look no further than the LPs of some of the funds that have high visibility. That's a far quicker way to get a return than to bilk a few million out of the pockets of the gullible public at large.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  >The best bet for getting rid of the charger cord are a strong reduction in required power for the phones, better battery technology, maybe micro fuel cells or some other exotic conversion technology. Or, and this is really out there, larger batteries? Which elfin focus group told everyone that a phone's weight should be measured in carats? I'd sacrifice a few extra ounces for a doubling in battery life without adding new devices.
tlb 11y ago
Empirically, "tech not actually possible" is a relatively rare reason for startups to fail. Other reasons are much more common. So putting a lot of effort into verifying this doesn't affect an investor's return much. Also, a common trajectory is shooting for something impossible, but discovering possible and useful things along the way which turn into great businesses. So even if you're 100% sure the idea is impossible, it might still be a good investment.
- api 11y ago
  Empirically, very few people lose races due to broken legs.
kzhahou 11y ago
I'm picture a Demo Day for the incubator hosting uBeam, and also Theranos. It's very awkward, just a big crowded room with people looking around at each other, no one saying a word, interrupted only by the occasional "Can we see a demo?" or "Has this been verified?", and the CEO runs up on stage and says "No" and sits down again. After about an hour and half of this staring contest, there's a mad rush of investors throwing open their checkbooks.
dikdik 11y ago
I believe the founder runs in the Summit Series circles. I don't have anything against the organization, but it seems to attract a lot of trust-fund types.

Someone 11y ago

http://ubeam.com http://ubeam.com: "The most recent paper to investigate the safety of ultrasound was just published [...] Of note is that this study used energy levels to tissue that were orders of magnitude higher than levels that uBeam’s system uses." The abstract at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041624X15001973 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041624X15...: "Demonstrated in vitro, 0.6 W of transcutaneous ultrasound power transfer to an implant.[...] with an average RF input to electrical charging efficiency of 20%" So, at best, 3W is "orders of magnitude higher than levels that uBeam’s system uses". That may charge your remote, but not your phone.

Retric 11y ago
iPhone 5 has a 5.45wh battery. If you can place a "speaker" in your room and add 0.3w * 8 h while you sleep that's ~44% charge every night. Which could be fairly useful. Up the power or assume people spend more than 8h a day in there bedroom and plenty of people would spend up to say 200$ to have one less thing to worry about.
- szczys 11y ago
  Sure, as long as it's right in the focus of the beam. If that means putting it in one particular spot, is there any benefit over inductive chargers? That method would be faster and more efficient.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    Hehe, well, ubeam says it literally has mechanical aiming mechanisms that locate power recipients and focus directly at them. So, practical and maintenance limitations aside, they have definitely answered that criticism.
    - GeorgeOu 11y ago
      If you read the FAQ on eevblog, 100 KHz frequency ultrasound will lose 90% of its energy at 2 meter range or just over 6 feet. That energy goes to heating the air that the sound travels through. Then you have to contend with any orientation offset. If the receiver is off by 90 degrees or more, there is zero energy received. If your hand blocks half the surface area, that's another 50% power loss. If you boost the power above 140 dB safety limit, you can burn your hands or cause other problems. At 140 dB at 2 meters, the theoretical best case with 100% efficiency transmitter and receiver will deliver 0.85 watts. You obviously lose even more than that. http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/

rootedbox 11y ago

If you have a room filled with speakers basically.. You are going to have phasing issues.

jacquesm 11y ago
And you're going to have the sum and the difference frequencies to deal with as well if the transmitters aren't perfectly synchronized. And those differences may very well be within the audible range.
- beamatronic 11y ago
  If nothing else, now you've created a new type of Active Denial System
sandworm101 11y ago
Phasing, and sympathetic resonance. With 10+ speakers pointing in constantly random direction, in an environment as changing as a starbucks, I would assume that somewhere something might start vibrating at a frequency well within human/cat/dog hearing. Just pray it isn't one of your fillings.

jimrandomh 11y ago

http://predictionbook.com/predictions/125891 http://predictionbook.com/predictions/125891 (entered back in July)

sandworm101 11y ago

If these people want to milk some billionaires for whom shelling a few million is easier than taking the time to understand a technology, I say more power to them. So long as they aren't receiving taxpayer support, nor draining the lifesaving of retires, then they can sell their dream for as long as dreamers have deep pockets. Is it really any worse than homoeopathy? A fool and his money.

jacquesm 11y ago
> Is it really any worse than homoeopathy? That depends on whether or not the inventors are aware of the fact that their tech likely will never work. In that case it is fraud. In the other case it is simply some group of people that are very much ready to believe their own story and successfully transmitting that enthusiasm to investors. I've seen a couple of cases like that and it always makes me sad that reality will shatter the dream ('wouldn't it be nice if?', yes, but that does not automatically mean that it is possible...). More often than not charisma plays an important role in these exercises in wishful thinking. If the purveyor of new, unproven tech is aware that it does not work there is yet another class of character, the ones that think they're only 'faking it until it will inevitably work'. Just one more little kink to work out and then all the reasons to fake it will disappear. The only ones I have no compassion with are the cold hearted fraudsters who dream up their schemes knowing full well they'll never deliver. Those are - fortunately - quite rare.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  I am reminded of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q

petra 11y ago

Why don't startbucks really buy usb charging ports or usb charging mats and put it on their shops , if that's so important ? why don't anybody big do it?

bsder 11y ago
Because they don't want to encourage people to stay longer than they already are.
- zemvpferreira 11y ago
  Actually, I think every Starbucks in the Bay Area has induction chargers built into several tables (along with a number of charging dongles to choose between for your particular phone connector): http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/starbucks-pma-wireless-charging-launched/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/starbucks-pma-wireless-c...
  - Animats 11y ago
    Their active area is so small that an ordinary USB-A power outlet would be more useful. You have to plug the rigid coil into your device, then place it exactly over the charging circle.
    - zemvpferreira 11y ago
      Induction is a very practical solution for when you don't have your USB charging cable with you. Plus, who's going to steal the coil to use at home? And it's a pretty magical experience when you use it.
      - Animats 11y ago
        That your phone can get position info from satellites is magical. That you can bring two halves of a transformer together and get power would not have surprised an electrician from a century ago.
    - 11y ago

hatsunearu 11y ago

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/ Here's an extremely in-depth analysis of this new snake oil.

Animats 11y ago

Those articles mention uBeam's patent filings, but don't actually cite them. You can look at their patent applications.[1] The overall system is described in their patent application #20120300593. This shows the overall plan: focus big transmitting transducers tightly on small receiving transducers. This resulted in a patent, #9094111. But to get the patent, they had to narrow the main claim to include "a receiver communications device adapted and configured to send input to the sender, the input comprising a power requirement that causes the sender to change a dwell time of the sender on the receiver". That's not an essential component of such a system, so it's not a broad patent. There's an application on beam-steering, #20140281655. That's a known technology, and the USPTO has sent back a non-final rejection based on prior art. But that tells us the plan - big phased array of ultrasonic transducers aimed at a tiny target. Direct line of sight is necessary between transmitting array and pickup array. How could they generate 155dB of ultrasonic energy? They applied for a patent on their transmit transducer, application #20140265727. That has an image of the sending transducer. It's a piezoelectric device with a silicon membrane, with a vacuum behind it. (The vacuum in back is to avoid pumping half the energy back into the device itself.) A "thin film" piezoelectric element makes the membrane vibrate. Devices like that have been built before, and the USPTO accordingly just sent them a final rejection. There's no new feature there which allows generation of more audio power than existing devices. So assume their device has performance roughly comparable to existing devices. Here's a product list from American Piezo, a commercial supplier of high-power air ultrasonic transducers.[2] Their highest power unit that transmits into air is 119dB. uBeam is claiming 155dB. That's 36dB more, or 4000 times as much power. That device needs 30V into 2K ohms to power it, or about half a watt. So uBeam's transmitter would need about 2 kilowatts, comparable to a small clothes dryer, spread over a large number of transmitting transducers. An array 64 square would do it. The American Piezo transducer is 16mm across, so the transmitting array needs to be about a square meter. That's a big transmitting array, with 4000 elements, each with its own drive electronics. All that energy, or as least as much as they can focus, gets aimed at a tiny target. The parent article discusses the attenuation problem. This gets worse with frequency.[4] Measured values of attenuation in air at 1MHz at 20C are between 160-165dB/m. This is huge. 1m from the transmitter, all the power is gone, used to heat the air. uBeam wants to operate in the megahertz range, but no way will that work. At 50KhZ, where most air ultrasonic systems work, attenuation is only 2dB/m. Their demo system (with about 1 foot range) used off the shelf 40KHz transducers. This thing might work in the 50-100KHz range, with a rather large and expensive transmitter array, when the target device was facing the transmitter. Safety remains an issue; if they actually built a 155dB system, they'd have a steerable ultrasonic welder. They could potentially build a nice demo system. Build a meter square array of off the shelf transducers running in the 50-100KHz range and mount it in a large picture frame. Cover it with speaker grille cloth, maybe with a picture silk-screened on so it looks like a framed picture. Have it scan at low power until a cooperating device reports a signal. Then focus the beam and turn the power up to full. It's not going to be totally silent, because some harmonics will get through and some objects in the target area will vibrate with the ultrasonics and resonate at a lower frequency. But it probably wouldn't be noticeable at a noisy trade show. You probably don't want to be near the focus of this thing. [1] http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/ubeam-inc/ http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/ubeam-inc/ [2] https://www.americanpiezo.com/standard-products/air-transducers.html https://www.americanpiezo.com/standard-products/air-transduc... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_welding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_welding [4] http://www.ndt.net/article/ultragarsas/63-2008-no.1_03-jakevicius.pdf http://www.ndt.net/article/ultragarsas/63-2008-no.1_03-jakev...

rootedbox 11y ago

One other thing.. Look at all there demo videos, and pictures. The size of the amp they are using to produce this volume of sound is pretty insane. So.. 1. This is going to add to your monthly electric bill considerably. 2. I wonder what kind of EM those amps are putting out.

rjdagost 11y ago

When I first heard of uBeam and their goal I did some back of the envelope calculations. Setting aside the safety issues (which are not settled, start-up CEO claims to the contrary), the biggest problem is conversion efficiency. Using some optimistic assumptions about conversion efficiencies and beam steering accuracy, I don't see how they're going to achieve even a 10% net conversion efficiency at useful distances. So I've been very skeptical about the prospects of success, yet I am very interested to be proven wrong on some of my assumptions. But the longer this product launch gets stretched out the more skeptical I get that this will ever be a product that anyone would want to buy. This is starting to feel like Theranos- the time has come to put up some real evidence.