4 ms·
I'd be curious to see a graph of transmission efficiency vs. distance. The technology here is almost certainly acoustic beamforming, and that large square unde
by etrautmann 13y ago
I'd be curious to see a graph of transmission efficiency vs. distance. The technology here is almost certainly acoustic beamforming, and that large square under wraps in the image is an array of small ultrasonic piezo speakers. Beamforming will give you better than 1/R^2 relationship between power and distance, but probably nowhere close to linear.
I'd be hard pressed to imagine this working over distances larger than the 3 feet demonstrated, which suggests constraints on the use case, like charging your laptop while its on a desk, for which there would seem to be easier methods of wireless charging (inductive coupling, conductive pads, etc).
Very interesting in concept, I'd like to see numbers before I believe anything.
- KingMob 13y agoSeriously. Given the existing levels of waste in our society and the associated environmental consequences, do we have any business switching to less efficient methods of power transmission? Unless this transmits as well as a cable, I'm not interested.
- tommoor 13y agoThe other thing is that this is probably still transmitting sound when there is nothing to charge? Which would be probably even more of a waste than any transmission efficiency
- acadien 13y agoIt would be trivial to build in a sensor that detects when a device that needs charging is within range.
- retube 13y agoReally? How would the charger discriminate between your phone/laptop and any other piece of electrical equipment in the vacinity?
- acadien 13y agoThe simplest method would be to add a short range transmitter to the charging device. You don't have to limit yourself to using the charging technology for that.