uBeam Ultrasonic Wireless Charging – A Familiar Fish Smell

[idpromnut]

I have a hard time believing she was talking to experts and getting wildly different answers. Much more likely is that she was asking wildly different questions.

It's always hard to know how to answer those questions.
If you go for 'Yes, BUT', the asker's brain shuts down in a cloud of $$$$ and glory after the first word.
If you go for "No", you're just being negative.

Perhaps the answer, when faced with a well funded and charismatic loon, is to say "I can [Whisper]try to[/Whisper] make it work. I'm good at that sort of thing, give me cash, not shares"

And then buy a lot of really good earplugs, ear defenders and hope your bones don't shake apart...

Funny, I have often found myself at the wrong end of these types of questions (be it kooky ideas or people trying to solve real problems) and I usually never answer yes or no: I usually start off with a question that is designed to make the person think about the original question. If they don't engage I typically extract myself from the conversation/argument ASAP.   

[EEVblog]

If you go for "No", you're just being negative.

The number of people who commented exactly that on my Solar Roadways video must now rank in the hundreds 

[jeremy]

as much as i know (maybe somebody knows more), we are un-affected by inductive loop energy transmission, it is probably why MRI can be used.

The signals measured by an MRI are more like RF transmission than inductive loop power. But if you mean that people are exposed to a strong magnetic field, then you are correct.

However, magnetic dosing is very interesting topic, and one which is still being researched. Although nothing has really been obvious (to my knowledge), some are still interested in learning about magnetic field "dose levels" experienced by machine operators.

Also, I've been told that if you get a high field MRI (>=7T), power it up and move around it quickly, you can generate eddy currents in your brain which can cause dizzyness, nausea/vomiting and fainting. So don't let your kids run around while the MRI is on 

[Precipice]

The number of people who commented exactly that on my Solar Roadways video must now rank in the hundreds 

Mostly, I just think "fsck'em", and go about my day. It's hellish annoying, watching people shovel cash into these abysses, though. Whether it comes form individual funders or institutions, it's still grim. Then again, it's all part of some huge game, and I shouldn't let it get to me. And that's the point at which I wonder if I'd take their shilling. And their shilling...

[German_EE]

"Also, I've been told that if you get a high field MRI (>=7T), power it up and move around it quickly, you can generate eddy currents in your brain which can cause dizzyness, nausea/vomiting and fainting. So don't let your kids run around while the MRI is on  "

There is some quite interesting medical research being carried out on the effects of magnetic fields on the brain. It certainly doesn't cure migraines though, I know this because I was part of the study group.

[Falk]

Hello,

this looks like the little sister of Steve Jobes. Good presentation, limited engineering 
OK, Steve DID push the edge much forward, starting with iMAC (ok, just nice looking), continuing with iphone (the first "real" smartphones) itunes, ipad and so on. He did this by using the latest available technology and having the best designer around.
So far so good. He might bend the laws of media distribution (itunes), but not the laws of physics. 10 years before, all this would not have been possible, due to the lack of such highly integrates CPU, TFT LCDs, memory and so on. All the early smart phones, blackberry, newton etc. proof this.

OK, back to topic. A lot of wuss around hot air. Haven't we seen this before?

http://www.witricity.com/

What do they claim?

http://www.witricity.com/technology/witricity-faqs/

"How does WiTricity's technology differ from traditional magnetic induction?"

What products do they have?

A demo kit.

http://www.witricity.com/products/prodigy/

A reference kit for 5W, not  betten than normal Qi stuff.

http://www.witricity.com/products/wit-5000/

3.3kW reference kit. Sounds impessive, but is noting special in the industry. Also 10-20cm gap ist standard.

http://www.witricity.com/products/wit-3300/

Absolutely NO sign of a power transfer, that is beyond existing technology. No Nicola Tesla revival 

But what do they have in HUGHE amounts?

http://www.witricity.com/technology/intellectual-property/

PATENTS!

This sounds like the rambus business strategy to me 

[SirNick]

this looks like the little sister of Steve Jobes. Good presentation, limited engineering 

The major difference between Jobs and a hack like this is Jobs was a (real) visionary grounded in practicality.  There's a world of difference between pushing the envelope and spouting sci-fi nonsense.

Jobs understood technology enough to know when it had matured to the point it could achieve the goals he was setting for the product, and then brought together vendors and engineers that could realize those goals.  While some of that technology existed before, it was either too expensive or too unreliable to be ready for consumers.  History is littered with companies falling to either side of that crucial point (by jumping the gun or waiting too long and being late to market.)

These people seem to think if you believe hard enough you can change the laws of physics.  That's not a visionary, it's just delusional.

[eneuro]

What products do they have?

WiTricity Wireless Warfighter  idea
It looks much better than this uBeam, however in this video they  [WiTricity] forgot that when they provide wireless electricity to military soldiers than... their enemy can use their energy while it is not possible to encrypt it 

[coppice]

this looks like the little sister of Steve Jobes. Good presentation, limited engineering 

The major difference between Jobs and a hack like this is Jobs was a (real) visionary grounded in practicality.  There's a world of difference between pushing the envelope and spouting sci-fi nonsense.

Jobs understood technology enough to know when it had matured to the point it could achieve the goals he was setting for the product, and then brought together vendors and engineers that could realize those goals.  While some of that technology existed before, it was either too expensive or too unreliable to be ready for consumers.  History is littered with companies falling to either side of that crucial point (by jumping the gun or waiting too long and being late to market.)

These people seem to think if you believe hard enough you can change the laws of physics.  That's not a visionary, it's just delusional.

If jobs understood anything, how come he did such a fantastic job of sinking Next? He had the best software platform ever developed, at a time when Windows had not yet established itself. He made a series of greed based decisions and killed it. Next lives on, in a watered down form, as the current Mac OSX platform, but its no thanks to any brilliance on Jobs part.

Jobs just got lucky.

[old gregg]

if this is so obvious imaginary undoable stuff how can she be funded with so much money ? Some people aren't questioning things before investing money at those huge corporation ?

or do they go only for the mediatic exposure, marketing crap, and if the product is produced, possible money feedback ?

[SeanB]

Some could be Astroturfing, but most likely is from those with little understanding of basic physics, and sadly those are likely to be in a majority. If you thought the maths in an art major was hard, and did not do physics in high school as it was either difficult, smelly or required thinking a little then you are likely to believe the charging via sound ( with the inverse cube law and the basic impedance mismatching on both sides being a difficult problem) is doable.

Most people do not realise than of the 100W you provide to a speaker 98W ends up as heat in the voice coil, the remaining 1W ends up as heat in the wiring, with 1W being used to heat up the room with sound waves. This is at best efficiency. With a horn you can get about 20W of audio power at a small range of frequencies, where the horn is large enough to do the impedance transformation, but not too large that it acts as a resistance. Do that at both ends and you might get 4W out for 100W in with them facing each other with no clearance between them.

[Falk]

if this is so obvious imaginary undoable stuff how can she be funded with so much money ? Some people aren't questioning things before investing money at those huge corporation ?

You remember the dot com bubble? Same thing, just smaller in scale.

One of the biggest dot com insanities in germany were the licences for the upcomming UMTS mobile network. The companies paid 100 billion euro (american billion = 100.000.000.000) For comparison. The whole iridium sattelite network costed just 8 billion, including ALL hardware!

[Falk]

My guess, it would me much more efficient to charge your gadgets with solar power, derived from solar cells in your hat, coat, shirt 
Of use a fuel cell, just order two B52 at the bar, one for you, one for your smart phone
Or put a generator at your rocking chair.
I heard bio gas is a growing energy source, just have a mean bean stew an . . . 

[coppice]

... and did not do physics in high school as it was either difficult, smelly or required thinking a little ...

Smelly? I think you've confused physics with chemistry. 

[SeanB]

Physics has a smell when you do experiments wrong, and in any case you typically will have both Physics and chemistry together initially.

[Yago]

Hello,

this looks like the little sister of Steve Jobes. Good presentation, limited engineering 
OK, Steve DID push the edge much forward

I got something very similar from the videos.
I felt that what was really being sold was Meredith Perry, a future as a great motivator, public speaker and supporter of "unorthodox inventors" (tongue firmly in cheek!). Notice Her G W Bush body language and posture, also it appears she has set points in her speech(on the sheet!) with "look at the audience" instructions etc, IE has sought training in public speaking but not electronics!

The "invention" could be an attempt to justify her inventor role for the future rather than actual profit.

As said, I too still wouldn't be surprised at all if this went mainstream, people are really that slavish to gadgets and fads.
Wanna buy the new Nike trainer, WiFi, GPS, 20Mpix cam, and stun gun functionality built in! :p

[djsb]

I'm just waiting for one of my design students to be given something similar to this as a project in my lab. To give them credit the students themselves have more sense and generally listen to what I have to say. We shall see. If I see it mentioned in my lab I'm going to have to upset some people.

I'm also wondering why there wasn't a "power meter" on the transmitter half of the setup as well in that video. Maybe they didn't want to encourage people to ask too many questions. I had to laugh as well when I saw the bog standard cheapo ultrasonic transducers used on the prototype. Surely with all that money they could do some reasearch into different transducers as a minimum. But that would mean applying for research money and funding someone.

[EEVblog]

I'm also wondering why there wasn't a "power meter" on the transmitter half of the setup as well in that video. Maybe they didn't want to encourage people to ask too many questions. I had to laugh as well when I saw the bog standard cheapo ultrasonic transducers used on the prototype. Surely with all that money they could do some reasearch into different transducers as a minimum.

To be fair, that prototype was before they got any money at all. As I understand it it was lashed together in a few days for a TV demo they got invited to.
I think she was just genuinely clueless about the difference between voltage and power in this instance at that early stage.

[EEVblog]

if this is so obvious imaginary undoable stuff how can she be funded with so much money ? Some people aren't questioning things before investing money at those huge corporation ?

Often they aren't "huge corporations", they are run on the whim of the founder with the deep pockets. If that person likes the idea, they make it happen.
The idea is that you throw money at a hundred crazy ideas, and you only need a one of them to go gangbusters to make a fortune and easily pay for the 99 that failed.

[miguelvp]

Wasting 90% of the power might be Ok in their minds if it's intended to be used in a place where you pay over $10 for a cup of coffee.

It's the cost of convenience 

[eneuro]

I'm just waiting for one of my design students to be given something similar to this as a project in my lab.

Maybe this evvblog: Tesla (Tower) Wireless Power Transfer could be worth to try too in labs, while demonstrations showed in "Tesla Wireless Power Transfer" by guy from club in Zagreb confused many participants with much higher than average knowledge of modern physics 
Decided to put it to another thread, while maybe someone will knew about software to make simulation like in this presentation using Maxwell's Equations while you might have educational licenses to such sophisticated software?
I was able to derive speed of light from those equations using academic math, but this mentioned in this presentation is for the moment above my math skills to try to verify those simulation results and those claims, however experiments made might be possible to try to do in home.
Tesla tower was not finished these days in, but destroyed about 100 years ago there might be something to investigate 

[TimNJ]

The idea is interesting, but her TED talk really pissed me off. Her arrogance and attitude towards people of greater education (in the area she is working in) and experience is revolting.

Lately we've seen a bunch of "great ideas" from these "ingenious innovators" and while you must encourage innovation, many of these innovators really forget about the practical implications of their ideas. It's not that the idea of wireless power transmission is intrinsically bad. Of course not; that would be terrific. But you can't ignore the laws of physics, no matter how much hype you get from the media or how big you dream.

And so I can't completely blame her as it seems the media got her on-board the hype train, which is probably partly the reason she thinks her idea is so brilliant. (Gee if the media thinks my idea is awesome, then it must be great!)

Mind you I am merely a 19 year old EE student, with only a summer's worth of internship experience, but I still find the TED talk to be very distasteful. Her lack of trust in those who have actual knowledge of the technologies she is experimenting with just proves her arrogance. The engineers she talked to didn't want to shut down her idea because she is a non-engineer, but they knew the practical roadblocks in her way. Why does she speak of engineers and physicists with such negativity? Who created the transistor? The IC? For the most part everything we enjoy and love today is a product of innovators who, YES, weren't afraid to think outside the box, but were also very knowledgeable in the field they were working in.

So to put down similar people and accuse them of being robotic, systematic, or linear is just asinine. Want to see real innovators? Step inside an Intel R&D lab. Or go to a Quantenna lab where you'll find a wise graybeard working on the RF front end for the latest 802.11 standard. Or NASA. Or...well you get it! Those are the guys (and girls) doing the real dirty work that makes real progress happen...not this imaginary fluff.

I could go on for days...but this attitude is really appalling.

[corrado33]

I'm still wondering why there was such a HUGE box on the receiving end of the initial demo. Maybe a bunch of batteries perhaps? I mean, you see circuit boards smaller in a laptop, and this was for a simple power converter?

Or they could have simply bought two of the same size, but regardless, it's a very fishy product.

The whole ultrasonic idea isn't a great one. Many animals can hear much higher frequencies. Dogs, as the most often quoted example, can hear up to 60kHz, while these transmitters are transmitting at 40kHz.

Dear ASPCA, (That's the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for you non Yanks)
This girl wants to torture dogs, please help.

Concerned Citizen.

Yeah, this will never fly.

[EEVblog]

So to put down similar people and accuse them of being robotic, systematic, or linear is just asinine. Want to see real innovators? Step inside an Intel R&D lab. Or go to a Quantenna lab where you'll find a wise graybeard working on the RF front end for the latest 802.11 standard. Or NASA. Or...well you get it! Those are the guys (and girls) doing the real dirty work that makes real progress happen...not this imaginary fluff.

And ironically she has to of course hire those same practical people:
http://ubeam.com/careers/
I invited her to come here and explain after she complained on twitter:

Maybe next time try to not take a piss on me/my co before finding out the details!

And then when Chris asked if such details would be provided:

sorry, not at this time.

So after 3 years and already $1.7M invested, still no data they can release.
Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, Solar Roadways... 

[EEVblog]

I'm still wondering why there was such a HUGE box on the receiving end of the initial demo. Maybe a bunch of batteries perhaps?

Yes, they admitted in the videos and also in the patent drawing there is a battery storage device, a.la the Airnergy device.

Yeah, this will never fly.

I can't see how it possibly can apart from some niche somewhere. It's going to be expensive and complicated even if they can get it working in a reasonable way.
Inductive charging pads are here now, built into a lot of phones already, cost under $20, don't need an external dongle on the phone, no battery storage, and are efficient and safe.
How can this possible hope to compete?

It's almost exactly like solar roadways.