Engineers at Nokia have hatched a plan to for a system that’ll charge phones using nothing more than ambient electromagnetic radiation. Or, as you and I might put it, mobile phones that suck electricity from thin air.
It sounds a little sci-fi at first, but it’s not: RFID tags are powered by electrical signals converted from electromagnet waves emitted by a nearby sensor machine. The thing is, the amount of electricity involved here is tiny, and Nokia’s system won’t even have a base station—it’ll draw from ambient electromagnetic waves, meaning Wi-Fi, cell towers and TV antennae. Nokia hopes to harvest about 50 milliwatts—not quite enough to sustain a phone, but enough to mitigate drain, and slowly charge it while switched off.
Current prototypes only gather about 5 milliwatts, which is essentially useless, and scientists and industry experts just don’t see the technology maturing to the point that Nokia wants it to, at least in the near future. But the company’s researchers are standing strong:
I would say it is possible to put this into a product within three to four years.
If you believe them, this is pretty exciting: maybe not as a primary charging mechanism, but as a battery extender. [Technology Review—Image from Technology Review]
David
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 3:19 PMI see this technology as being great for Electric cars in the future. If they can do it on a large enough scale, even to just extend the range of them would be great.
That and the new lithium-sulfur batteries, world is looking green.
Leonard Grey
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 9:47 PMFree energy is good energy.
If they can start bringing technologies like this together that can convert waste energy into something useful, even to power a phone, I think it’s a step in the right direction.
Radiowaves, heat, movement, sound. All of these things have been found to generate small amounts of electricity, but surely a collaboration would create 4 small amounts!
Even in lower drain devices, like clocks this would be brilliant!
Bring on the alternative energy!
Bowler
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 2:34 PMself-charging phones are definitely cool, though I’d like to wait for a little while to make sure that they aren’t more prone to cause cancer…