Invisible lasers power things wirelessly

At CES this year, we saw several different stabs at wireless power. Most of them involved either direct contact, or minuscule amounts of electricity. At ETech last week, we saw a demo from a company called PowerBeam, which has a wireless power solution that promises to tackle both of those shortcomings.

The pay PowerBeam works is exactly like it sounds: with a beam of power. And beam of power = laser. Infrared (invisible) lasers, in this case. Pretty high powered lasers, too, with between 1 and 5 watts continuous output. The PowerBeam lasers are spread out a bit so that their power densities top out at around 10mW/mm2, but it's all heat energy, so if you put your hand in front of the beam, it feels kind of like putting your hand over a hot cup of coffee.

Source: ohgizmo.comAdded: 4 February 2009