Wireless Electricity Could Be Missing Component of Ubiquitous Technology
I stumbled across something quite interesting today while checking my Gmail. A link to a story about wireless electricity from FastCompany.com. The article itself is an awesome read, if only for the fact that is mentions Nicola Tesla. I’ve always preferred Tesla’s version of electricity with its thigh-thick bars of white-hot lightning and random objects that glowed blue when too near his experiments. His kind of electricity seemed to be the stuff of excellent special effects made real, while Thomas Edison’s electricity is tame, boring stuff that might give you a slight jump if you touch it, but it won’t harmlessly cascade down your back in blue-white rivulets of awesome.
Perhaps I’m being too over the top. Anyways, the article says wireless electricity is here, and that devices can be powered by being within an electromagnetic field. From the article:
Some of the most visually arresting examples of wireless electricity are based on what’s known as radio frequency, or RF. While less efficient, they work across distances of up to 85 feet. In these systems, electricity is transformed into radio waves, which are transmitted across a room, then received by so-called power harvesters and translated back into low-voltage direct current. Imagine smoke detectors or clocks that never need their batteries replaced.
Taking that one step further, imagine active RFID chips that never have to be replaced. One of the big limitations on RFID chips, the building blocks of the ubiquitous future we always hear about, is that only very little information can be stored on a passive RFID chip. Active RFIDs, which need a power source, can act like little computers and store tons of information (relatively speaking). But the power source drives the price up considerably. With wireless electricity one could develop RFID chips with the low price of passive models and the high data storage of active models.
Additionally, ubiquitous power hanging around ambiently in the air goes right along with the ubiquitous computing we keep hearing so much about. I should do some research to see if someone is already looking into this.
