I really hope they get a product to market. The wireless charging aspect is boring, but it'll be cool to modify it for frying things, messing with dogs and stuff
As a person who wants an exterior security camera, a wireless bluetooth speaker in my bathroom, smoke detectors placed in the highest parts of my ceiling, a completely wireless TV on my wall, to never have to plug my phone in again, LEDs in the ceiling of my garage for better visibility in the corners, and about 100 other little things, wireless power will change everything for the better.
A small battery and wireless power basically means no more cables for about 90% of home devices.
I share the cynicism I infer in your comment; I don't think that this demo really gives any weight to the idea that this will be an actual, practical, product. However, the commenter asked for a video and there it is.
No details of input power to the transmitter nor power received by the receiver.
Companies have demo'ed similar devices before, but where the rubber meets the road is the efficiency and total power of the system. In other words, if it takes 200 watts to transmit and 200 milliwatts received at 3 feet, it is not useful for a consumer nor the environment.
I am all for encouraging startups and giving benefit of the doubt, but isn't this just a show?
I am curious how this is different from what she would have demoed to her angel investors several years ago.
Displaying that it's charging is very different from actually charging. It could look like it's "charging" but may actually take all day to finish charging, in which case the technology is completely useless.
I am especially put off by how the "startup community" people seem to be patting her on the back saying "it works!" even though none of them actually believes it to be so deep inside.
Literally ALL of the criticism around this company have been how there's a huge discrepancy between the demo and their actual product (hint: there is none), and she should have addressed THAT point (about how fast it charges) instead of doing another one of those deceptive demos that don't mean anything.
> Displaying that it's charging is very different from actually charging. It could look like it's "charging" but may actually take all day to finish charging, in which case the technology is completely useless.
Absolutely not! Give me a thin mat that I can put next to me at my office desk, in the kitchen, on the night lamp stand, and on my car console between seats, and I can guarantee you you have billion-dollar in sales!
Don't forget the common nature of us human is laziness! If something can be done simpler (not reaching out for cable and plugging it into device 3 times a day) then you will find people to buy it! It doesn't have to charge my phone to full, enough to get me going for a while until next stopping/charging point.
Absolutely. It's probably not going to be a replacement for cables but rather a whole new way of using a phone charger. Right now my phone's sitting on my desk. I didn't bother to check the battery level and decide if I should plug it in. Wouldn't it be great if it was automatically charging without me having to make any decisions. Even if only a little bit, that's going to extend the battery life between deliberate charges, or even indefinitely.
And if it's operating at <10% efficiency that will be a disaster for the environment too.
In any case, it sounds like you want one of the inductive charging mats that are already available. My guess is that in real life the performance will be similar.
Maybe I should have clarified the context. I said "useless" considering the competitive landscape. If you're building something that directly competes with Apple you better have a technology that's 10 times better.
The reason I am harsh about ubeam is because there are other companies that are actually making things happen while this company seems to be all about raising money and getting attention in silicon valley. I root for companies that actually get shit done over companies that are all show.
If you want to charge your phone while it sits on a mat you can use an induction charger where is an entirely different technology from what uBeam is promising.
Give me a thin mat that I can put next to me at my office desk, in the kitchen, on the night lamp stand, and on my car console between seats, and I can guarantee you you have billion-dollar in sales!
That's available, and it's not selling. Qi charging pads are available for about $20, and many Samsung phones will charge from them. They're available in wood, bamboo, and built into tables.
There's also MagMIMO, a startup which is using RF beamforming to get a range of about 30cm. That doesn't seem to be getting much traction.
To be fair, that's just because the emission of microwave ovens is tuned to a resonance of water molecules. That said, I think that resonance is rather broad, so you could expect a fair amount of coupling at large power.
Also, microwaves can denature proteins; one symptom of massive microwave exposure is cataracts (from the proteins in the eye denaturing).
As somebody who came from an electrical engineering background into software, literally from the bottom of the bottom on a physical layer level....
Software VC would really benefit from a couple emag classes before trying to disrupt physics. These extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence. I don't want to be anywhere near any kind of field that's strong enough to power my laptop. Acoustic or otherwise. No thank you please.
Software VC? The number of technically competent vcs is vanishingly small. There may be just one, paul graham. Almost every vc lies their asses off about having a programming background but few to none have written a line of code in a decade.
99% of vcs are closer to bankers than programmers. They're like high risk loan officers. Sometimes they get defrauded.
Sunlight, electric heaters, stoves, induction stoves, flying batteries (toy helicopters), electric lightbulbs. There are all kinds of common ways of transmitting large amount of power through space. Sure, they can be harmful but we work around the risks. As long as it deposits the energy into people slowly and as heat, then we'll feel it before it causes damage and get out of the way.
Those things don't even have fancy high tech people-detecting safety features. Maybe this charger shuts down when it detects that some of its energy is being lost to an unknown place.
My dawg, you just named several things that require physical contact for energy transfer (ie they plug into the wall) and one wireless system that will literally kill you if you stay out in it unprotected.
I don't know if you meant to prove my point, but really man, physics is cool.
If you guys can't watch the videos on twitter essentially she held a phone that was turned off kinda in front of the machine, then it turned on and a "battery" showed on the screen with a 3 frame animation of it "charging"
No proof whatsoever that it was charging anything.
Does that mean it's not real? Unsure. But this wasn't that convincing.
transmitting electromagnetic signals over the air has been done long time ago (think fm radio), but to charge a battery you need much more power, to a level that becomes unsafe foe humans to be around it. there is no mention in the article about saftety and what the long term effect will be on humans when constantly around it.
Without a powermeter or multimeter, that's just a gimmick demo. I've done that with UHF RFID tags from 10m away, where we harvest a few mA to light up an LED. That doesn't mean it can charge a cellphone.
From the looks of it the founder and her roommate (a political science major who's since been written out of the company's history) developed a basic idea with no experience or demonstrable ability to turn it into a product, and received tens of millions to give it a shot.
It's not a new idea--ultrasound is already used to power pacemakers, and people have been playing with the concept for years. However, basic calculations shows that this is not likely to be practical as a consumer device. The founder has no physics or electrical engineering background, so there's no reason to think that she has some unique ability to overcome these hurdles. She's also hasn't demonstrated that she's developed any novel techniques to overcome the engineering challenges.
So why all the VC money? Why give VC money to a 20 something with no experience and no background with the hope that she'll hire enough engineers to figure it out? It just doesn't make sense to me.
I said the same thing about Theranos. They basically gave an inexperienced person who had no real domain knowledge millions of dollars to run a research lab. It looks very similar. Are VCs just desperate for a media friendly founder success story?
Just a shot in the dark, but I think VC's probably see this as game changing tech if someone can pull it off. Something that would pay off big and that slot of risk must've been acceptable.
> but I think VC's probably see this as game changing tech if someone can pull it off
I'm sure it would be. But what I don't understand is why not hire someone who knows what they're doing to try to pull it off? Why hire an inexperienced person with almost no domain knowledge just because she happens to have a very basic idea sketched out.
I'm sure the company is filled with engineers now. But my point is why put someone with no research, engineering, or management experience in charge?
Imagine a hypothetical scenario. I'm a VC and some kid with a degree in biology told me we should make phones that use ultra capacitors instead of batteries.
Me: "That sounds cool, but it's probably not going to work because ultra caps just don't have the energy density."
Kid: "Yeah but if you give me 25 million dollars I can hire a bunch of engineers and figure it out."
Me: "Why do I need you? You're idea isn't novel. You don't have any experience or training, and you probably can't even do it."
Kid: "But if I do, you'll make billions."
Me: "I can give the same money to anyone of thousands of people qualified to actually run an R&D project, and I'll have a much higher chance of success."
All three links are about the same small startup that is being funded by SBIR through the NIH, which is all about trying to give seed funding for experimental technology. The patents are listed on their website and links don't show anything more advanced than ubeam.
That's direct-contact transmission at very short range: "an acoustic energy emitting device is disposed on coupling medium which in turn is disposed against skin surface. The coupling medium may comprise carageenan, xanthum gum, alginic acid, silicon gel, or other acoustic impedance matching material that is suitable for long-term skin contact." With a viscous gel, as used for ultrasonic medical scanning, efficiency is much better than through air.
> When she did so, a large battery charge counter on the screen showed that it was indeed charging.
That doesn't prove it was charging, just that it could sense the ultrasound and throw up a graphic. Let's see it run for 30 minutes and show the Android battery app for proof.
Precious little technical details don't inspire much confidence on the performance of the product.
After years of research and controversy we get a demo that shows basically very little.
To trigger a charge detection on a phone, you only need to apply a sufficient voltage and be able to supply a small current. It will "charge" but may take days to do so.
As a minimum, the UBeam receiver must be able to generate 5W of power (1A at 5V) to adequately charge a phone (10W or more would be needed for a faster charge though).
Assuming that the technology is 100% efficient in its power transceivers (which is impossible), there is still the matter of exponential attenuation when transmitting ultrasounds through air: at 2m, to produce 5W at the receiver, you need to generate 25W at the transmitter.
This gets worse very fast. Even if you assume they magically manage to get extremely efficient, the laws of physic will prevent the technology from being useful beyond a couple of meters without requiring hundreds of watts of transmitted power.
And we're not even talking about the actual performance of the transducers, or the fact that the angle between the transmitter and receiver can affect power transmission, as would air humidity levels...
UBeam will most probably end up producing something super-niche. On paper and in controlled demos, you can transmit some power through the air using ultrasounds.
So maybe they'll manage to have an exhibit in a museum or some technology-of-the-future showrooms and they'll probably continue to have demo at exhibitions for years to come while not answering the difficult questions of efficiency and practicality with actual verifiable numbers.
Having an affordable, safe, useful, practical mass-consumer product though?
Nah, not a chance.
UBeam is one of these companies build on wishful thinking. They sell a dream and get money from people caught in that dream. They can't back down now, so they have to keep up appearances and come up with polished demos from time to time just to keep the buzz and the mystery alive, and the money flowing.
2m is what they demoed if I'm right.
The power attenuation actually varies a lot and is dependent on ultrasound frequency, temperature, humidity, air pressure...
You get better transmission at low frequencies, but below 100kHz you risk affecting pets.
We can glean some info from the videos posted to Twitter. The receiver is a big bulky cover around the phone- no way that will fit in my pocket. The transmitters are the size of a microwave oven. Notice that she is very careful to hold the phone so as to maximize the area that is exposed to ultrasound. There doesn't seem to be any tracking at work.
At the end of the day, after 5+ years and $25M+ spent ubeam is still quite far away from a viable consumer product. It would kill Meredith Perry to admit it, but the naysayers were right about the viability of this technology. At some point you've just got to cut your losses and move on.
Perry first stood a couple of yards from a large white box emitting ultrasound waves, and used a device that glowed red when it was in the waves' path. She then grabbed an Android smartphone in a large and bulky black case, and held it up in that path. When she did so, a large battery charge counter on the screen showed that it was indeed charging.
Of course you can transmit some power that way. But how much? And what's the efficiency?
Here's their previous demo, from 2011.[1] What they had then was a bunch of cheap ultrasonic transducers [2] aimed at each other. Those used to be popular for hobbyist robotics. Some unspecified amount of power was transmitted about two feet. Probably a few milliwatts.
The last time UBeam published numbers, they claimed to be generating a few kilowatts of sound power. Such things are usually used as weapons systems (see LRAD) or welders. You don't want to be in a kilowatt ultrasonic beam. The energy mostly ends up as heat.
This technology is either too low power to be useful or, if pumped up to useful power levels, too dangerous.
So how much energy was transferred? The charging icon easily could come on under many different situations and also if the phone receiver pack was engineered to detect the presence of an ultrasonic signal that would then tell a battery pack inside the receiver pack to start charging the phone that easily could be used to fake the situation. So again one of these situations that easily can be judged to be good or bad with like 2 numbers but they refuse to publish those numbers.. Shocking...
63 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadAs a person who wants an exterior security camera, a wireless bluetooth speaker in my bathroom, smoke detectors placed in the highest parts of my ceiling, a completely wireless TV on my wall, to never have to plug my phone in again, LEDs in the ceiling of my garage for better visibility in the corners, and about 100 other little things, wireless power will change everything for the better.
A small battery and wireless power basically means no more cables for about 90% of home devices.
https://twitter.com/spencerrascoff/status/827344599362383872 and https://twitter.com/broukhim/status/827430306101669888
My cynicism is wholly directed at the company which I believe to be a fraud. I'm sorry if I accidentally sent some of it in your direction.
This is a scenario that's well known can work (at high power levels which are not generally legal).
What doesn't work so well is charging off axis and at higher power levels.
This is a school science project level demo...
Companies have demo'ed similar devices before, but where the rubber meets the road is the efficiency and total power of the system. In other words, if it takes 200 watts to transmit and 200 milliwatts received at 3 feet, it is not useful for a consumer nor the environment.
One of the older articles about uBeam stated that a trickle charge for IoT/Phone was the target after the physical limitations were discussed.
I am curious how this is different from what she would have demoed to her angel investors several years ago.
Displaying that it's charging is very different from actually charging. It could look like it's "charging" but may actually take all day to finish charging, in which case the technology is completely useless.
I am especially put off by how the "startup community" people seem to be patting her on the back saying "it works!" even though none of them actually believes it to be so deep inside.
Literally ALL of the criticism around this company have been how there's a huge discrepancy between the demo and their actual product (hint: there is none), and she should have addressed THAT point (about how fast it charges) instead of doing another one of those deceptive demos that don't mean anything.
Absolutely not! Give me a thin mat that I can put next to me at my office desk, in the kitchen, on the night lamp stand, and on my car console between seats, and I can guarantee you you have billion-dollar in sales!
Don't forget the common nature of us human is laziness! If something can be done simpler (not reaching out for cable and plugging it into device 3 times a day) then you will find people to buy it! It doesn't have to charge my phone to full, enough to get me going for a while until next stopping/charging point.
In any case, it sounds like you want one of the inductive charging mats that are already available. My guess is that in real life the performance will be similar.
And it certainly doesn't seem that way. Apple is already rumored to be planning to launch a wireless charging (that actually works) feature with iPhone 8 http://bgr.com/2017/02/02/iphone-8-specs-energous-wireless-c...
The reason I am harsh about ubeam is because there are other companies that are actually making things happen while this company seems to be all about raising money and getting attention in silicon valley. I root for companies that actually get shit done over companies that are all show.
That's available, and it's not selling. Qi charging pads are available for about $20, and many Samsung phones will charge from them. They're available in wood, bamboo, and built into tables.
There's also MagMIMO, a startup which is using RF beamforming to get a range of about 30cm. That doesn't seem to be getting much traction.
Also, microwaves can denature proteins; one symptom of massive microwave exposure is cataracts (from the proteins in the eye denaturing).
But man, I really hate charging cables!
Software VC would really benefit from a couple emag classes before trying to disrupt physics. These extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence. I don't want to be anywhere near any kind of field that's strong enough to power my laptop. Acoustic or otherwise. No thank you please.
99% of vcs are closer to bankers than programmers. They're like high risk loan officers. Sometimes they get defrauded.
Those things don't even have fancy high tech people-detecting safety features. Maybe this charger shuts down when it detects that some of its energy is being lost to an unknown place.
I don't know if you meant to prove my point, but really man, physics is cool.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/
Overall, it seems unlikely to work, even for trickle charging phones, under anything but ideal conditions.
No proof whatsoever that it was charging anything.
Does that mean it's not real? Unsure. But this wasn't that convincing.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/
It's not a new idea--ultrasound is already used to power pacemakers, and people have been playing with the concept for years. However, basic calculations shows that this is not likely to be practical as a consumer device. The founder has no physics or electrical engineering background, so there's no reason to think that she has some unique ability to overcome these hurdles. She's also hasn't demonstrated that she's developed any novel techniques to overcome the engineering challenges.
So why all the VC money? Why give VC money to a 20 something with no experience and no background with the hope that she'll hire enough engineers to figure it out? It just doesn't make sense to me.
I said the same thing about Theranos. They basically gave an inexperienced person who had no real domain knowledge millions of dollars to run a research lab. It looks very similar. Are VCs just desperate for a media friendly founder success story?
edit: Turns out there was already a patent covering something very similar filed in 2003 https://www.google.com/patents/US6798716?dq=ultrasound+power...
Also possibly to fill diversity requirements.
I'm sure it would be. But what I don't understand is why not hire someone who knows what they're doing to try to pull it off? Why hire an inexperienced person with almost no domain knowledge just because she happens to have a very basic idea sketched out.
Imagine a hypothetical scenario. I'm a VC and some kid with a degree in biology told me we should make phones that use ultra capacitors instead of batteries.
Me: "That sounds cool, but it's probably not going to work because ultra caps just don't have the energy density."
Kid: "Yeah but if you give me 25 million dollars I can hire a bunch of engineers and figure it out."
Me: "Why do I need you? You're idea isn't novel. You don't have any experience or training, and you probably can't even do it."
Kid: "But if I do, you'll make billions."
Me: "I can give the same money to anyone of thousands of people qualified to actually run an R&D project, and I'll have a much higher chance of success."
If the company fails, do the VCs take over? This could be their way of ensuring control over this technology.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/tune-in-turn-on-power-up
The Arizona research company is piezo energy technologies. http://gopiezo14.com
2011 patent: https://www.google.com/patents/US8082041
2014 patent: https://www.google.com/patents/US8974366
But I haven't seen anything commercially available in the medical industry
That doesn't prove it was charging, just that it could sense the ultrasound and throw up a graphic. Let's see it run for 30 minutes and show the Android battery app for proof.
To trigger a charge detection on a phone, you only need to apply a sufficient voltage and be able to supply a small current. It will "charge" but may take days to do so.
As a minimum, the UBeam receiver must be able to generate 5W of power (1A at 5V) to adequately charge a phone (10W or more would be needed for a faster charge though).
Assuming that the technology is 100% efficient in its power transceivers (which is impossible), there is still the matter of exponential attenuation when transmitting ultrasounds through air: at 2m, to produce 5W at the receiver, you need to generate 25W at the transmitter.
This gets worse very fast. Even if you assume they magically manage to get extremely efficient, the laws of physic will prevent the technology from being useful beyond a couple of meters without requiring hundreds of watts of transmitted power. And we're not even talking about the actual performance of the transducers, or the fact that the angle between the transmitter and receiver can affect power transmission, as would air humidity levels...
UBeam will most probably end up producing something super-niche. On paper and in controlled demos, you can transmit some power through the air using ultrasounds. So maybe they'll manage to have an exhibit in a museum or some technology-of-the-future showrooms and they'll probably continue to have demo at exhibitions for years to come while not answering the difficult questions of efficiency and practicality with actual verifiable numbers.
Having an affordable, safe, useful, practical mass-consumer product though? Nah, not a chance.
UBeam is one of these companies build on wishful thinking. They sell a dream and get money from people caught in that dream. They can't back down now, so they have to keep up appearances and come up with polished demos from time to time just to keep the buzz and the mystery alive, and the money flowing.
You get better transmission at low frequencies, but below 100kHz you risk affecting pets.
Some details and a link to an interesting paper: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/52195/ultrasonic-...
At the end of the day, after 5+ years and $25M+ spent ubeam is still quite far away from a viable consumer product. It would kill Meredith Perry to admit it, but the naysayers were right about the viability of this technology. At some point you've just got to cut your losses and move on.
Of course you can transmit some power that way. But how much? And what's the efficiency?
Here's their previous demo, from 2011.[1] What they had then was a bunch of cheap ultrasonic transducers [2] aimed at each other. Those used to be popular for hobbyist robotics. Some unspecified amount of power was transmitted about two feet. Probably a few milliwatts.
The last time UBeam published numbers, they claimed to be generating a few kilowatts of sound power. Such things are usually used as weapons systems (see LRAD) or welders. You don't want to be in a kilowatt ultrasonic beam. The energy mostly ends up as heat.
This technology is either too low power to be useful or, if pumped up to useful power levels, too dangerous.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHxyweJcZI [2] http://www.futurlec.com/Ultrasonic_Sensors.shtml
http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-sausage-f...
- it's a lengthy series of posts from the former VP of Engineering at uBeam, going into the politics and technological issues.