Over-the-air wireless charging from Disney? Research paper published on magnetic waves

Energous seems to be the company in the lead for extending wireless charging beyond the pale of a contact pad.

Its WattUp standard works to deliver power to devices over radio frequencies at around 5.8GHz between a transmitter unit and a fairly small receiver unit that can be built into a device. The more antennas that can successfully throw and catch those waves, the more power that can be generated for the device. It’s a standard that’s as portable as the phones we carry.

But Disney Research seems to be looking into a stationary, but more powerful wireless charging technology — quasistatic cavity resonance. Yes, we’re kind of surprised that Disney has a mouse in the race, but given the many theme parks it runs with enclosed rides, its interest makes a good deal of sense.

To quickly and dirtily explain QSCR, it centers from Nikola Tesla’s coil circuit to produce an electric field that proved bountiful in energy, but risky when it came to human health — well, at least to regulators who came in well after the discovery to keep things in check. The way to counter that was to design a metallic room to allow currents to circulate freely in it, but also embed capacitors in the walls, ceiling and floor to take in energy as to not let it settle in human tissue.

Testing done on a purpose-built QSCR room at 54 cubic meters — let’s call it a living room in a decent-sized house in the US — showed that transmissions at 1.32MHz could safely bring up to 1,900 watts of effective power to electronics within the room. Fringe efficiency was marked at about 40 percent while peak figures were at 95 percent.

Lamps of all sorts and a fan received power. A phone charged in the environment. An RC car was able to operate. And all of this only comes at the cost of sacrificing AM radio waves.

Obviously, more testing needs to be done for determining the efficacy, safe operating practices and health impacts of QSCR rooms. Feasibility is a whole bundle of worms in itself when it comes to construction and inclusion in buildings. But if we can derive much more use out of our smartphones from the results of Disney Research’s testing, published in the journal PLOS ONE, we’ll gladly take it.

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