Disney Researchers Make Wireless Power Transfer Breakthrough

Once the technology is perfected, many travelers will be hoping that it makes its way outside the Disney theme parks and into airports, rail stations and other public areas where charging stations are now located. It has been up to something much more. The prototype living room can transfer power wirelessly to 10 devices like the smartphone, a fan, a lamp, an RC vehicle and more. We’ve basically traded in charging cables for custom-built surfaces that only work if we place our phones right on top of them.

Disney Research demonstration of the simultaneous powering of multiple devices in a realistic living room type environment.plos.org / Disney Research photo outside of the room.

Secondly, all of about 100 watts of the 1900 total watts of power being beamed around the room have to be used by objects inside the room. Sure wireless charging exists, but only for small devices like your smartphone.

“This new innovative method will make it possible for electrical power to become as ubiquitous as WiFi”, said Alanson Sample, Associate Lab Director and principal research scientist at Disney Research. Noting that corded charging stations are bereft of “geometric freedom”, Disney researchers said wireless power transfer should be as simple as wireless data transfer, and just as safe.

The set-up of the entire room will be a bit unusual, though. The rectangular room, which the researchers call the “metallic chamber”, has a copper pipe in the center of the room that holds a set of capacitors.

Near-field magnetic resonance is a highly localized – traveling a few millimeters to a few feet before transfer efficiency drops off rapidly as the source and receiver are separated by more than a coil diameter. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all made of aluminum panels. Future iterations may move to conducting paint. The argument, or sales pitch, says current wireless chargers only work because the magnetic fields are oriented to each other. This question will inevitably pop up. The only real issue is that they are not completely sure how safe it is to be around the copper pole. But some guidelines will have to be followed like not getting too close to the pole.

Nonetheless, the concept is still quite fascinating.

The system allows you to connect all the devices you need..