The last keynote of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Thursday had Intel doing a demonstration of its technology for the wireless transmitting of power. Two round metal coils are placed two to three feet apart--one working as a transmitter, the other a receiver. A light bulb attached to the receiver remained lit as the coil was moved around.
The phenomenon that the demonstration leveraged on is called "resonant induction," and builds upon the work of Marin Soljacic, a physicist at MIT. Strongly coupled resonators operate on a principle similar to how a singer's voice can shatter glass. This particular demonstration was able to transmit 60 watts of power, enough to power a smaller laptop. Development is ongoing, and no timeframe was given for this technology to be brought to market.
To read up more about this story:
- check out this InformationWeek article [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/processors/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210200085