Can plywood be used as a wireless charger?Maybe a decade ago, the answer would have been in negation,but presently,with the emergence of technology and researchers like Kaushik Choudhury, an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University and Yousof Naderi, former graduate students can turn plywood into smart wireless chargers.
They are working on a system to transform any surface to a wireless charger to power any number of electronic devices simultaneously, be it laptops, cell phones or tablets. They are aiming to power airborne drones that will require advanced wireless technology.
Although, these electronic devices and drones cannot be charged simultaneously, it is possible. These two researchers are trying to integrate electromagnetic coils as tiles on the table tops. The energy will flow from one point to another. The airborne drones require high energy which is unsuitable for electronic devices, but to tackle this problem,Kaushik Choudhury and Yousof Naderi have applied Artificial Intelligence which will consume less energy. These tiles will be based on machine learning algorithms which will sense whether objects placed on the table require power or not.
It will start as a chain reaction transferring energy from one master tile to another.With the use of the hopping system, the energy will jump from one tile to subsequent tiles until it reaches the electronic devices. It is software-defined that will route energy seamlessly. Most of us are familiar with the wireless charger which powers specific electronic devices, but these researchers are trying to overcome this drawback by using magnetic resonance that will transmit energy similar to radio waves.
Kaushik Choudhury says, “If you carefully choose, what the electronic components of these wires are, you can get two cells placed closed to each other working in perfect harmony.”
This system is the basis for the new company named DeepCharge, founded in 2018 by Kaushik Choudhury and Yousof Naderi, which is developing the prototype into a variety of product designs. It is also testing the contactless wireless technology that will be particularly helpful for complex gadgets like drones, which would just need to hover around other drones with an energy transmitter.
Shweta Tripathi
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