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posted by janrinok on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the fairy-dust dept.

There's an article up on Hackaday on a proposed wireless power transmission system by tech company uBeam.

uBeam transmits power via sound, specifically high intensity ultrasound. uBeam has never demonstrated a prototype, has never released any technical specs, and even some high-profile investors that include [Mark Cuban] have not seen the uBeam working.
...
In what is perhaps the greatest breakdown ever posted on the EEVForums, [georgesmith] goes over what uBeam is, how the technology doesn't make sense, and how far you can take a business before engineers start to say, 'put up or shut up.' [georgesmith]'s research goes over just some of what makes uBeam impractical, but digging even further reveals how insane uBeam actually is.

The article is based on a forum posting by georgesmith titled "The uBeam FAQ" on the EEVBlog which is skeptical of the practicality of the approach, and critical of the reaction of the tech press.

Thousands of startups have technical problems. Why uBeam? Why make this FAQ?

Investors have given uBeam over $23 million. But that's not a big problem. It's their money, they can spend it how they want, and they can afford to lose it.

It's likely that uBeam's product will fail, if it ever launches. But that's not a problem either. Plenty of other companies take unlikely chances, and on the whole, we're better off for it. We can't succeed without failures along the way.

The problem is that uBeam's CEO, Meredith Perry, has turned the wireless power industry into a vehicle for her own self-promotion. uBeam, which has never demoed a prototype, lead Forbes to proclaim "Is this woman the next Elon Musk?"

The homepage of uBeam is also available for the curious.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday October 23 2015, @02:01AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Friday October 23 2015, @02:01AM (#253482) Homepage

    On a very low theoretical level, this works, insofar as "it is possible to turn energy into sound, then turn that sound back into energy". Physics is physics.

    I suspect where this falls apart is the engineering, also known as the hard work or the actual work. There's issues with power being lost over distance, the sound being blocked, the sound being received properly, the sound going through and killing people, etc., all the hard engineering work that makes a useful product.

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