Cords are terrible, horrible things.
Some of you may remember back to ancient times, when everything was corded and nobody was able to leave their houses. Ever. We’ve come a long way since then, what with wireless communication and batteries that don’t totally suck, but really, batteries do still kind of almost totally suck.
Whenever you have anything that needs to survive away from the electrical grid for an extended period of time (whether it’s a cellphone or a sensor), batteries are inevitably the limiting factor, and roboticists from the NIMBUS Lab at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln have solved the problem with a quadrotor that can fly around and wirelessly charge up electronics for you.
The type of wireless power that these quadrotors are beaming out is based on what’s called “strongly coupled magnetic resonances.” Basically, you’ve got two coils of wire: one on the quadrotor, and one on whatever you want to power or charge (we’ll call this the receiver). The quadrotor drives a current in its coil, which generates an oscillating magnetic field. When the quadrotor gets close enough to the receiver, the receiver’s coil starts to resonate with the magnetic field transmitted by the quadrotor. That resonance induces a voltage in the coil, which the receiver can use to power its electronics or charge its battery.
via IEEE Spectrum – Evan Ackerman
The Latest Streaming News: Wireless Battery Chargers updated minute-by-minute
