Wireless Charging coming on strong

For home and car.

Home

It was just a short year ago that we went to Fulton Innovation's tiny booth at CES and failed to get a working wireless power demo, but a lot's happened since then -- the company is at CES 2009 in force, with a much larger, swanker booth, partners like Energizer and Motorola demoing working products, and tons of working real-world examples of the tech in action. We were particularly taken with the modded Dish DVR that automatically turned itself on and off when the remote was placed on top of it to charge up -- oh, and the remote featured super-capacitors instead of batteries that charge fully in 10 seconds.

Car

If eCoupled tech were adopted by an auto manufacturer, they could potentially do away with dozens or even hundreds of proprietary plugs. A replacement car stereo could plug into any car's dash with no adapters needed.

Haith said his company is currently talking with Texas Instruments to embed eCoupled system into future gadgets, and since L&P already works with several OEMs like Toyota, BMW and Ford, wireless power in your car could come soon.

Here are some excerpts from Fulton Innovation's press release...

eCoupled technology works based on the principle of resonant magnetic induction. Magnetic induction means that electricity travels via magnetic fields instead of conductive material. Wireless power has been used however inefficiently in one form or another since the days of Nicola Tesla in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Most electronics today use a power cord to transport power to the device's electronic circuits. From there, a transformer uses magnetic induction to form an inductive link that transfers power between the internal circuits. eCoupled technology simply replaces the conductive power cord with another inductive link.

Just like a transformer, eCoupled technology uses coils to transmit energy. One coil in the eCoupled power supply generates a magnetic field at a frequency that will resonate with a second coil in an eCoupled-enabled device. This resonant magnetic field causes electricity to be generated in a device with the second coil. One eCoupled-enabled power supply can power several compatible devices.