New Technology Delivers Power To Electronic Devices in a Test Space (scientificamerican.com) 41
What if your smartphone or laptop started charging as soon as you walked in the door? Researchers have developed a specially built room that can transmit energy to a variety of electronic devices within it, charging phones and powering home appliances without plugs or batteries. Scientific American: This system "enables safe and high-power wireless power transfer in large volumes," says Takuya Sasatani, a project assistant professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering and lead author of the new study, which was published this week in Nature Electronics. The room relies on the same phenomenon as short-range wireless phone chargers: a metal coil, placed in a magnetic field, will produce an electric current. Existing commercial charging docks use electricity from a wall outlet to produce a magnetic field in a small area. Most recent smartphones are equipped with a metal coil, and when such a model) is placed on the dock, the interaction generates enough current to power the phone's battery. But today's commercial products have a very limited range. If you lift a phone off the dock or swathe it in a case that is too thick, the wireless power transfer ceases. But if a magnetic field filled a whole room, any phone within it would have access to wireless power.
"The prospect of having a room where a variety of devices could just receive power anywhere is really compelling and exciting," says Joshua Smith, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the new study. "And this paper takes another step toward making that possible." In the study, the researchers describe a custom test room of about 18 cubic meters (roughly equivalent to a small freight container), which Sasatani built from conductive aluminum panels with a metal pole running down the middle. The team furnished the room with a wirelessly powered lamp and fan, as well as more prosaic items, including a chair, table and bookshelf. When the researchers ran an electric current through the walls and pole in a set pattern, it generated a three-dimensional magnetic field within the space. In fact, they designed the setup to generate two separate fields: one that fills the center of the room and another that covers the corners, thus allowing any devices within the space to charge without encountering dead spots.
By carrying out simulations and measurements, Sasatani and his co-authors found their method could deliver 50 watts of power throughout the room, firing up all of the devices equipped with a receiving coil that they tested: a smartphone, a light bulb and a fan. Some energy was lost in the transfer, however. Delivery efficiency varied from a low of 37.1 percent to a high of about 90 percent, depending on the strength of the magnetic field at specific points in the room, as well as the orientation of the device. Without precautions, running current through the room's metal walls would typically fill it with two types of waves: electric and magnetic. This presents a problem, because electric fields can produce heat in biological tissues and pose a danger to humans. So the team embedded capacitors, devices that store electric energy, in the walls. "It confines the safe magnetic fields within the room volume while confining hazardous parts inside all the components embedded inside the walls," Sasatani explains.
"The prospect of having a room where a variety of devices could just receive power anywhere is really compelling and exciting," says Joshua Smith, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the new study. "And this paper takes another step toward making that possible." In the study, the researchers describe a custom test room of about 18 cubic meters (roughly equivalent to a small freight container), which Sasatani built from conductive aluminum panels with a metal pole running down the middle. The team furnished the room with a wirelessly powered lamp and fan, as well as more prosaic items, including a chair, table and bookshelf. When the researchers ran an electric current through the walls and pole in a set pattern, it generated a three-dimensional magnetic field within the space. In fact, they designed the setup to generate two separate fields: one that fills the center of the room and another that covers the corners, thus allowing any devices within the space to charge without encountering dead spots.
By carrying out simulations and measurements, Sasatani and his co-authors found their method could deliver 50 watts of power throughout the room, firing up all of the devices equipped with a receiving coil that they tested: a smartphone, a light bulb and a fan. Some energy was lost in the transfer, however. Delivery efficiency varied from a low of 37.1 percent to a high of about 90 percent, depending on the strength of the magnetic field at specific points in the room, as well as the orientation of the device. Without precautions, running current through the room's metal walls would typically fill it with two types of waves: electric and magnetic. This presents a problem, because electric fields can produce heat in biological tissues and pose a danger to humans. So the team embedded capacitors, devices that store electric energy, in the walls. "It confines the safe magnetic fields within the room volume while confining hazardous parts inside all the components embedded inside the walls," Sasatani explains.
Another scam (Score:2, Informative)
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I have developed an AI capable of detecting assholes. Let's point it your direction. Beep. Beep. Beep. Oh look, it found one!
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I rather call it a scientific minded delusion of grant/venture money of what's possible in tightly controlled conditions vs what's practical and probable for a possible consumer.
https://youtu.be/LLQT_Q5ZrPU [youtu.be]
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Meh, unmod
You could combine this (Score:2)
with the floors that generate as much as a 9 volt battery for only slightly more than a pad near the door you can set your electronic junk on that costs $20.
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as written, this violates laws of Physics (Score:1)
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Re: as written, this violates laws of Physics (Score:1)
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I was thinking myself, "So all the lost energy is going right into brain tumors?"
any metal in the room is going to suck the power (Score:2)
It is not hard to setup a large magnetic field that does this, but any pieces of metal the room are going to pull power from the magnetic field and generate heat.
So the furniture for the room will need to be picked very carefully to have nothing conductive in it, as to not always suck power and generate heat.
You have to love pointless clean room tests/research that are unlikely to have any real world issues.
I also wonder what the power usage is just running the field, I guess though it could be quite low if
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Metal is not the only conductive material. Anybody whose body contains salt water should ask serious questions before getting into one of these rooms.
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"So the furniture for the room will need to be picked very carefully to have nothing conductive in it, as to not always suck power and generate heat."
People with pacemakers will just thrive in there.
Perfectly safe! (Score:5, Funny)
The heck with charging my phone wirelessly - what I'm waiting for is the microwave-less kitchen, where you can put your meal anywhere on the counter and in a few minutes it'll be piping hot! I'm sure they can do it safely if they embed some capacitors into the kitchen walls.
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My relatively recent microwave from Samsung engages the power erroneously whenever the door is slightly open. Like, if you start to open the door, but don't pull it open forcefully enough to surpass the initial hinge resistance, and the door remains open by only a few millimeters, the microwave will literally start cooking.
And I trust these guys with wireless charging on a device I put into my pocket for hours each day *smh*
Re: Perfectly safe! (Score:2)
What about the opposite? (Score:4, Funny)
guess the next story (Score:2)
Wow, first a story about DNA vaccines together with posts suggesting it could be sprayed on a crowd of the vaccine challenged.
And now a post about high power transfer by EM wave to keep the 5G/Wifi worrywarts on edge. What next ? My guess, something about implantable microchips running windows 11.
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Wow, first a story about DNA vaccines together with posts suggesting it could be sprayed on a crowd of the vaccine challenged.
And now a post about high power transfer by EM wave to keep the 5G/Wifi worrywarts on edge. What next ? My guess, something about implantable microchips running windows 11.
Nah, the implantable microchips won't support Windows 11, you'll need to buy some new ones. /s
it's a conspiracy - (Score:2)
Just another way to spread COVID. Bad enough we have 5G popping up everywhere. Don't fall for this scam!
3-Dimensional Charging (Score:2)
I knew I'd seen this before during the previous hype cycle by Sample.
3-Dimensional Charging via Multi-Mode Resonant
Cavity Enabled Wireless Power Transfer
http://www.alansonsample.com/p... [alansonsample.com]
If you want to generate magnetic waves (Score:2)
Why doesn't research of this kind (Score:2)
Stop this. It is not a good idea. period.
You and I will conduct current inside such a field as well, with our tiny little coil cells.
Nice! your phone is charged, and your blood cells are dead.
Setting the pace of innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a tiny Medtronic Micra pacemaker installed in my right ventricle. This sounds like a room that might kill me if I got anywhere near it.
Re: Setting the pace of innovation (Score:2)
A blast from the past - DisneyResearchHub (Score:2)
https://la.disneyresearch.com/... [disneyresearch.com]
https://youtu.be/gn7T599QaN8 [youtu.be]
That explains this Micky-Mouse technology.
Sounds like a scam (Score:2)
Without precautions, running current through the room's metal walls would typically fill it with two types of waves: electric and magnetic. This presents a problem, because electric fields can produce heat in biological tissues and pose a danger to humans. So the team embedded capacitors, devices that store electric energy, in the walls.
What the heck is this nonsense? A changing magnetic field will induce electric field (duh), and no capacitors can help with that. Neither electric nor magnetic fields are dangerous for living tissue unless the field strengths are truly ridiculous. And capacitors won't help with electric fields either, they do pass AC current but it's not the issue.
Oh, Boy... (Score:2)
Theorising that one could wirelessly charge within his own bedroom, Doctor Takuya ("Sam") Sasatani, stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished...His only guide on this journey is Siri, a digital assistant from his own time, who appears in the form of a voice that only Sam can hear. And so Doctor Sasatani finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home