In a nod to the original Tesla, Nikola Labs now announces that they have created a device that can convert radio waves into useable DC power for smart phones. If they are correct, our smart devices may be able to fully transition into the 21st century, no longer stuck with 19th century charging conventions.
Dr. Rob Lee, co-founder of Nikola Labs and former chair of Ohio State's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, announced the project at the May 4th Tech Crunch Disrupt event. According to Lee, 97 percent of the energy your smartphone burns through as it sends your texts and pushes email into your inbox is simply wasted, lost into the atmosphere.
"Nikola Technology efficiently converts RF signals like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE into DC power using its proprietary energy harvesting circuit" Lee says. "The result is usable energy that can provide power to mobile devices wirelessly."
As part of a new Kickstarter campaign that the company hopes to fund, an iPhone case can supposedly recaptures some of that wasted power in what will, if it works, be a pretty amazing new form of recycling.
A modest form of recycling, to be sure; Nikola Labs only claims that the DC power-converting rectifier circuit and antenna will only extend your battery life by about 30 percent, and it takes hours to do even that. However, much of the beauty of the design is in the small size and passive process that it uses.
"It's not a spectacular, in-your-face technology, but it is a technology that works" Co-founder of the company, Will Zell says. "And it works passively and it gives you extra power that you need to get you from sun up to sun down."
This, however, isn't the first time this idea has been tried. In 2009 the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge announced that they were working on harvesting this "wasted" energy for use. However, the Nokia technology was, in the end, very limited, harvesting only a few milliwatts of power. It isn't clear yet how much more efficient the new Nikola Labs process is, but it would need to be much more so to work.
Possible reasons for the ongoing failure of this kind of technology include the potentially very small amounts of energy which could practically be harvested, the very slow speed of the passive process, and not to mention the possible problems of the process either interfering with service by diverting needed power and preventing signals from reaching their targets, or causing the de-tuning of the original antenna, which would result in more power drained.
The project is set for its Kickstarter launch next month, so fans and naysayers alike should soon know whether or not the device works as claimed. The longer term plan from Nikola Labs is to have the device ready within one year; they plan to sell the cases for $99 each and hope to be ready to ship them within four months of the Kickstarter debut.
Nikola Labs has also indicated that this technology might eventually be used in other devices that don't have major electricity requirements including embedded sensors, medical devices, and wearable technology.
