By Matthew Ponsford and Nick Glass, CNN
March 17, 2014 --
Dr Katie Hall is developing ways to transfer power without wires
In the home of the future, wireless energy will be as common as Wi-Fi Internet, she believes
The technology could lead to new and revolutionary medical devices
(CNN) -- Katie Hall was shocked the second she saw it: a light-bulb glowing in the middle of a room with no wires attached.
Looking back, it was a crude experiment, she remembers: a tiny room filled with gigantic copper refrigerator coils -- the kind you'd see if you cracked open the back of your freezer.
She walked in and out between the coils and the bulb -- and still the bulb glowed.
"I said: 'Let's work on this. This is the future.'"
What's the trick?
"We're going to transfer power without any kind of wires," says Dr Hall, now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity -- a start-up developing wireless "resonance" technology.
"But, we're not actually putting electricity in the air. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air."
It works like this: WiTricity build a "Source Resonator" -- a coil of electrical wire that generates a magnetic field when power is attached.
Can spider silk help you self-heal?
Meet the genius behind 3-D printing
Is this the ultimate space suit for Mars?
If another coil is brought close, an electrical charge can be generated in it. No wires required.
"When you bring a device into that magnetic field, it induces a current in the device, and by that you're able to transfer power," explains Dr Hall.
And like that, the bulb lights up.
Wireless homes
Don't worry about getting zapped: Hall assures that the magnetic fields used to transfer energy are "perfectly safe" -- in fact, they are the same kind of fields used in Wi-Fi routers.
In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet.
If all goes to WiTricity's plans, smartphones will charge in your pocket as you wander around, televisions will flicker with no wires attached, and electric cars will refuel while sitting on the driveway.
WiTricity have already demonstrated their ability to power laptops, cell-phones, and TVs by attaching resonator coils to batteries -- and an electric car refueller is reportedly in the works.
Hall sees a bright future for the family without wires:
"We just don't think about it anymore: I'm going to drive my car home and I'm never going to have to go to the gas station and I'm never going to have to plug it in.
"I can't even imagine how things will change when we live like that."
World outside
Beyond these effort-saving applications, Hall sees more revolutionary steps.
When Hall first saw the wireless bulb, she immediately thought of medical technology -- seeing that devices transplanted beneath the skin could be charged non-intrusively.
WiTricity is now working with a medical company to recharge a left-ventricular assist device -- "a heart-pump essentially."
The technology opens the door to any number of mobile electronic devices which have so far been held back by limited battery lives.
"The idea of eliminating cables would allow us to re-design things in ways that we haven't yet thought of, that's just going to make our devices and everything that we interact with, that much more efficient, more practical and maybe even give brand new functionality."
What's next?
The challenge now is increasing the distance that power can be transferred efficiently. This distance -- Hall explains -- is linked to the size of the coil, and WiTricity wants to perfect the same long-distance transfers to today's small-scale devices.
For this reason, the team have high hopes for their new creation: AA-sized wirelessly rechargeable batteries.
For Hall, the applications are endless: "I always say kids will say: 'Why is it called wireless?'"
"The kids that are growing up in a couple of years will never have to plug anything in again to charge it."
*UPDATE (March 17)
It's great to see so much discussion of this technology on social media and the comments thread.
There seems to be a lot of interest in the contribution of Nikola Tesla's experiments to the development of this technology. Dr Hall discussed Tesla briefly in her interview with Nick Glass:
Nick Glass: Given that Tesla and others realized all this over a Century ago, why's it taken so long?
Dr Hall: I don't think they realized exactly what we've done. They were certainly dreaming of wireless power -- there's no question about that. In those days, it was a different problem, because they were really thinking about: how do they get the power from where it's generated to where it's used. And in that case they might have been thinking about Niagara Falls generating the power and getting it to New York City -- and that's a long distance. We're not proposing that the technology we have here at WiTricity would be used for that kind of application. When we came around, power's already being transferred by wires to homes and rooms and things of that nature, so we had a much different problem, which was really just this much shorter distance.
As WiTricity have mentioned on their website the Highly Resonant Wireless Power Transfer technology they have developed is also distinct from Tesla's creations -- and, crucially, is efficient enough to be economically viable.
» CCS.N0000 ( Ceylon Cold Stores)
» Sri Lanka plans to allow tourists from August, no mandatory quarantine
» When Will It Be Safe To Invest In The Stock Market Again?
» Dividend Announcements
» MAINTENANCE NOTICE / නඩත්තු දැනුම්දීම
» ඩොලර් මිලියනයක මුදල් සම්මානයක් සහ “ෆීල්ඩ්ස් පදක්කම” පිළිගැනීම ප්රතික්ෂේප කළ ගණිතඥයා
» SEYB.N0000 (Seylan Bank PLC)
» Here's what blind prophet Baba Vanga predicted for 2016 and beyond: It's not good
» The Korean Way !
» In the Meantime Within Our Shores!
» What is Known as Dementia?
» SRI LANKA TELECOM PLC (SLTL.N0000)
» THE LANKA HOSPITALS CORPORATION PLC (LHCL.N0000)
» Equinox ( වසන්ත විෂුවය ) !
» COMB.N0000 (Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC)
» REXP.N0000 (Richard Pieris Exports PLC)
» RICH.N0000 (Richard Pieris and Company PLC)
» Do You Have Computer Vision Syndrome?
» LAXAPANA BATTERIES PLC (LITE.N0000)
» What a Bank Run ?
» 104 Technical trading experiments by HUNTER
» GLAS.N0000 (Piramal Glass Ceylon PLC)
» Cboe Volatility Index
» AHPL.N0000
» TJL.N0000 (Tee Jey Lanka PLC.)
» CTBL.N0000 ( CEYLON TEA BROKERS PLC)
» COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC (COMD. N.0000))
» Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency
» CSD.N0000 (Seylan Developments PLC)
» PLC.N0000 (People's Leasing and Finance PLC)
» Bakery Products ?
» NTB.N0000 (Nations Trust Bank PLC)
» Going South
» When Seagulls Follow the Trawler
» Re-activating
» අපි තමයි හොඳටම කරේ !
» මේ අර් බුධය කිසිසේත්ම මා විසින් නිර්මාණය කල එකක් නොවේ
» SAMP.N0000 (Sampath Bank PLC)
» APLA.N0000 (ACL Plastics PLC)
» AVOID FALLING INTO ALLURING WEEKEND FAMILY PACKAGES.
» Banks, Finance & Insurance Sector Chart
» VPEL.N0000 (Vallibel Power Erathna PLC)
» DEADLY COCKTAIL OF ISLAND MENTALITY AND PARANOID PERSONALITY DISORDER MIX.
» WATA - Watawala
» KFP.N0000(Keels Food Products PLC)
» Capital Trust Broker in difficulty?
» IS PIRATING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY A BOON OR BANE?
» What Industry Would You Choose to Focus?
» Should I Stick Around, or Should I Follow Others' Lead?