Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said on Thursday they will soon be able to charge a computer or cellphone battery from across a room, perhaps making the annoyance of wires or dead batteries a thing of the past.
MIT scientists and their wireless energy transfer technology may soon eliminate wires that tether our machines to wall sockets, or may keep batteries topped up and ready to go.
"This invention could free us from power cables and ideally replace batteries to a good extent, at least in the context of a home or office setting," said Aristeidis Karalis, a student member of the MIT team that worked on the problem for four years.
The team at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a top US academic laboratory, has shown their fledgling "WiTricity" technology can power a 60 watt bulb from a power source 2m away.
That is enough juice to power an average laptop, said Marin Soljacic, a professor of physics at MIT who led the six-person research team.
"This is a major milestone," Soljacic said. "The technology is almost at the point where it could be used for a practical application."
The technology is simple and based on resonance, which causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied to it, Soljacic explained.
Two resonant objects on the same frequency can exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with objects that are not on the same wavelength.
For the light bulb experiment, the MIT team used electromagnetic resonators in the form of copper coils.
One of the coils was attached to a power source.
The other acted as a receiver.
The transmitter emitted electrical vibrations of a certain frequency that rippled across an electromagnetic field to the receiver, or "resonator," 2m away.
In this experiment, the system was operating at about 45 percent efficiency.
Investigators hope to raise that to the 70-80 percent level by using different materials and tweaking the technology.
Soljacic and his team said they are confident the technology can be improved to the point that consumers can dispense with power cords for their laptops, PDAs or cellphones, as long as they are used in the same room as the power source.
"This won't work on a football field," Soljacic said.
Details of the experiment appear in this week's issue of the journal Science.
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