Close on the heal of the development in Nokia of the technology to wirelessly harvest power (see an earlier post), researchers from Intel last week demonstrated a way to recharge electronics from about meter away using a “resonant” magnetic field. At an event held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, they showed off a pair of iPod speakers connected to a 30-centimeter-wide copper coil that received power from a similar, but larger, copper coil about a meter away. The recharging technique relies on a phenomenon called resonant coupling, in which objects can exchange energy when tuned to resonate at the same frequency.

A similar approach was developed by researchers at MIT in 2007, and spun off into a company called WiTricity. This company has already developed a few products that use resonant coupling to recharge, including a car battery.

Source: Technology Review 2009 – Intel’s Wireless Power Play, a research project cuts the electric cord, wirelessly charging an electronic device.

Technology Review 2007 – A Wirelessly Powered Lightbulb, researchers at MIT have created a revolutionary device that could remotely charge batteries and power household appliances.