As already pointed out, they use ultrasound to beam the energy, and they claim to have filed some patents applications. Alas, there's a ton of prior art in this

As already pointed out, they use ultrasound to beam the energy, and they claim to have filed some patents applications. Alas, there's a ton of prior art in this space, and I wonder how they're going to navigate them. For example, ultrasound is already used to wirelessly charge pacemakers: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/wireless-pacemakers http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/wireless-pace... And here is a very pertinent patent in this space (2004) that also contains a nice review of prior art: http://www.google.com/patents?id=508SAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=ultrasound%20power%20transmission&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=508SAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&#38... The central difficulty in this idea, as pointed out in the above patent, is automatically aiming a sufficiently focused beam at the receiver. Otherwise you get killed by 1/rˆ2 power decay. And this is a non-trivial task, which will force them to either go the royalties way or dodge the existing patents. I don't doubt the team can move forward, but I wonder if the undergrads (and their investors) have underestimated the difficulty and history of the problem. That being said, it's refreshing to see folks inspired by real-world problems that don't involve "social". Wishing them best of luck!