WiTricity means Wireless Electricity

Posted by filipinoprogrammer | 916 Views
June 8th, 2007 in New Technology |

The tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today’s electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past. US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players without wires. The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said. Although the team has not built and tested a system, computer models and mathematics suggest it will work.

HOW WIRELESS POWER COULD WORK

source: BBC News

1) Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper
2) Antenna resonates at a frequency of about 10MHz, producing electromagnetic waves
3) ‘Tails’ of energy from antenna ‘tunnel’ up to 2m (6.5ft)
4) Electricity picked up by laptop’s antenna, which must also be resonating at 10MHz. Energy used to re-charge device
5) Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 10MHz

The team from MIT is not the first group to suggest wireless energy transfer. Nineteenth-century physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla experimented with long-range wireless energy transfer, but his most ambitious attempt - the 29m high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower, in New York - failed when he ran out of money. Others have worked on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer such as lasers. However, unlike the MIT work, these require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home. Professor Soljacic and his team are now looking at refining their setup.

“This was a rudimentary system that proves energy transfer is possible. You wouldn’t use it to power your laptop.

“The goal now is to shrink the size of these things, go over larger distances and improve the efficiencies,”

said Professor Soljacic.

The work was done in collaboration with his colleagues Andre Kurs, Aristeidis Karalis, Robert Moffatt, John Joannopoulos and Peter Fisher.

Sources:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6129460.stm
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6725955.stm
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21871209-2703,00.html

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