While a lot of high-end smartphones boast wireless charging, the technology is still in its very early stages and usually doesn't work at distances of more than a couple of centimetres.
But a new inductive wireless charging system developed at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology can beam power to devices up to five metres away.
The system relies on transmitters and receiver coils, which is the same set-up that current inductive charging systems use, but the team managed to get a much larger range by developing a new mechanism called the Dipole Coil Resonant System. The receiver coil in their device has two magnetic dipoles - a primary one that induces the magnetic field and a secondary one that receives the electric power.
Of course, the current prototype is huge - three metres long and 10cm wide - so it's not going to be built into your phone any time soon.
But the potential extends far beyond small electronic devices. As Ryan Whitwam reports forExtremeTech:
"To demonstrate that this system is still viable at five meters, Rim and his team set up a demo with the receiving coil powering a large LCD TV and three 40 watt oscillating fans. This really drives the point home that we’re not just talking about a more effective way to charge electronics, but a way to power everything in a room without running wires."
At the moment, the device (check it out in the video below) delivers 1403 watts of power with 36.9% efficiency at the optimum distance of three metres away. That's enough to power several high-end desktop PCs or almost 24 new LCD TVs without wires, reports ExtremeTech.
We need one, now.
We need one, now.
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