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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.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:42PM
If you can reliably charge using sound, why ultrasound?
Most people live in so much ambient noise, we'd never need a power grid ever again.
(Score: 1) by eapache on Thursday October 22 2015, @04:53PM
There's a lot more energy in ultrasound than in ambient noise. The best you could do with ambient would be trickle-charge, and even that would be slow.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday October 22 2015, @05:14PM
They are using ultrasound at such a high volume it would make your head explode if you could hear it : ) It would be like charging your phone by by standing within 1 meter of a running jet turbine. Yeah, it would work.. but i don't think there would be many users of such a charging system.
Because they are using ultrasound you can't hear how ridiculously loud it is.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:05PM
The can't hear it argument isn't convincing to many, including the Ubeam Faq (second link in TFS).
For many years is sat in front of three large-ish computer monitors arranged in a curved layout in front of me, with another three serving the coder immediately beyond my monitors.
The fly-back transformers in those monitors were not supposed to be hear-able, but each day as I walked out of the building my hearing was suppressed except for a high pitched whine, which would go away after 5 or six hours. But in the mean time I had to ask people to repeat themselves and was accused of going deaf. (Deafness and Obesity, and perhaps hairy palms, often arrive with an "accusation" unlike almost any other maladies).
I didn't have any problem on weekends.
Comparing notes with coworkers revealed most of us had the same problem. We lobbied for cloth-covered cubby dividers, and that did help some, but there was no way at that time to hide the noise of your own monitors other than a NASA Mission Control type enclosure for the monitors, which management wouldn't spring for, to the accompaniment of jokes about us not being rocket scientists).
I still have problems hearing high frequency stuff to a much greater extent than people my same age.
Just because you can't sense it, doesn't mean its not harmful.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday October 22 2015, @08:59PM
The range at which people hear is going to vary somewhat. I'm with you, I could always tell if a TV was turned on just from that high pitched squeal that they all emitted. But, I'm not personally convinced that it was hearing in the conventional sense. It felt very much like it was bypassing parts of the ear. Unfortunately, I never thought about wearing earplugs to see if that made any difference, so I'll never know.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:37PM
Directional transmitters are smaller at shorter wavelengths.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 22 2015, @05:29PM
Not knowing anything about the technology it certainly sounds a bit wacky.
However, a quick google returns a few papers from fairly respectable peer-reviewed publications so it might not be as crazy as it sounds.
(Score: 2) by moondoctor on Thursday October 22 2015, @05:50PM
A skim through the comments on hackaday turns up loads of "I work in acoustics and heres why this won't work" type comments. Main issues seemed to boil down to power dropping off exponentialy over distance and very high 'sound pressure levels'.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:03PM
That's the issue. Sound waves can be turned back into electricity by having them agitate a membrane with a magnet attached and inducing a current. However, sound waves follow an inverse squares drop off pattern, IIRC, and so you very quickly lose most of the energy you had to have. You can focus things a bit, but then you run into orientation issues where you have to get the receptor oriented in 2 dimensions with a clear line of sight in the middle.
I can't imagine this working out any better than those induction chargers do where you have to place the item basically right on top of it in order to get the charge.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday October 23 2015, @02:01AM
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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(Score: 5, Informative) by gman003 on Thursday October 22 2015, @05:35PM
Per OSHA regulations [osha.gov] for noise limits, ultrasonics are weighted below the normal level but are still considered dangerous at high volumes, as the subharmonics could be dangerous. A 40-100KHz ultrasound generator cannot exceed 145dB under any situation, and cannot exceed 115dB if it may come into physical contact with a substrate that may come into contact with a human, which would likely apply to any home device.
TFA cites uBeam as operating at "up to 155dB", exceeding all limits for industrial ultrasonic noise. While OSHA does not regular consumer equipment, I think the CPSC may have some things to say about this, should it ever reach market.
(Yes, later on TFA discusses this in more detail, but I did my own research as soon as I saw the decibel figure. RTFA this time, it's actually pretty good)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:09PM
Actually the FAQ (second link) is far more enlightening than TFA.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:10PM
The real takeaway here is the shocking lack of science knowledge throughout the investment and business media nexus among the very people who are making multi-billion dollar investments. Their lack of basic economic theory is almost as bad and probably more dangerous. The miracle isn't that a new scam like this doesn't appear almost daily in the .com world, the alt energy world, the general tech fields, etc. No, the miracle is that, apparently by virtue of making up for losing money by losing it in volume, the world is still advancing at a fairly rapid pace on the tech front.
One would think that a prudent and humble venture capital firm, after being burned on scams a few dozen times, would appoint a board of folks like us to advise and drop any pitch where 75%+ of the advisory board said "snake oil!" And by 'us' I mean folks like who post here, a mix of trained and untrained but all who follow tech, have a good idea of what is actually possible and what isn't and care about these things enough to Google a bit before recommending throwing millions into something based, apparently, on nothing more than a good elevator pitch.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by PocketSizeSUn on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:56PM
Money doesn't make you smart. VC disagrees.
News at 11.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:13PM
A POLITICAL VIEW OF HYDROPONIC SHOWER POLLUTION?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Pax on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:15PM
Not my area but isn't there a chance this might send animals tits crazy?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:21PM
That was my thought. Dogs and cats can hear upward of 40kHz. Mice and other small mammals can go as high as 80kHz. Bats can hear upward of 115kHz and dolphins can hear upward of 160kHz. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range [wikipedia.org]
To me, it just unnecessary noise pollution and a dumb idea. We have better methods like induction or hell, a USB wall jack that work better and are more efficient.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 23 2015, @06:07PM
Not my area but isn't there a chance this might send animals tits crazy?
I would imagine it would affect their ears, instead, but what do I know?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:30PM
So far the only problem I could spot in the article is the author's exaggerated confidence in Forbes.
"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?" "
Unless she actually did something to deceive Forbes (nothing like that seems to be mentioned) I see no problem with that.
Forbes is, after all, a free magazine, free to publish whatever it's readers will read.
I don't have to remind you that there are magazines much crazier than Forbes ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @10:12PM
I don't know. Is she sitting on a billion dollars?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Covalent on Thursday October 22 2015, @07:02PM
Sound follows the inverse square law (thanks a pantload Universe). So even if the beam of sound is highly collimated (which I'm assuming it is), it'll still spread out. That means power transmission rates will decrease with distance. Alignment will also be critical here, so turning or moving the device, even a little, should lower the efficiency.
So what I'm getting is a charging system that involves me holding my device pointed precisely at a transmitter. We have something kinda like this already: It's called an electrical outlet. I'd rather just get a longer cord.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @07:21PM
Only if it is emanating from a point source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @07:59PM
You get the inverse square law even with a directional antenna.
If you assume the beam is within a few arc-seconds, those few arc-seconds will cover more and more area the father away you get from the transmitter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:30PM
Yes, but this only applies when you are in the far-field, and that can be quite a distance away before you get there for beamed transmission.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Thursday October 22 2015, @07:10PM
The problem is that uBeam's CEO, Meredith Perry, has turned the wireless power industry into a vehicle for her own self-promotion
How can somebody turn an entire industry into "a vehicle for their own self-promotion," especially when the stuff is being written by a PR department and the media, and is (as mentioned below) just short bits woven into overall articles?
[and] Forbes to proclaim "Is this woman the next Elon Musk?" among hundreds of other press hits.
So the big deal here is: a company is promoting their (evidently tech-capable) CEO, and various media outlets are praising her. Okay...
uBeam constantly stresses their need for secrecy, to avoid discussing any technical details,
As far as I've ever seen, that's pretty normal behavior, isn't it?
while at the same time doing photoshoots for fashion magazines that say Meredith Perry "is the real-life version of Tony Stark."
"While at the same time" makes it sound like it's some kind of bizarro contradiction for a company to keep corporate secrets and have their CEO appear in the media.
I checked out the link [refinery29.com] out of curiosity. The article is part of a series on young female entrepreneurs, shows one picture of her (how is that a "photoshoot"?) and is a standard short profile/interview about her lifelong obsession with science and her related goals.
The website itself is a standard lifestyle 'webzine' site for women, with very standard sections like entertainment, news, tech, living, etc. as well as the usual beauty & fashion sections. But I guess a "lifestyle magazine for women" automatically equates to "fashion magazine" in the FAQ-writer's mind, gag-worthy as it is.
When someone else in the ultrasound industry criticized uBeam [7], uBeam director Mark Suster didn't show his math was wrong, even when it was. His rebuttal had not a single number, no diagrams, no graphs, no references to the literature on ultrasound.
According to the FAQ-writer, Mark Suster is an investor, so it kind of makes sense that he wouldn't try to rebut the (evidently irrelevant) math using his personal knowledge.
Instead, [Suster's response] sounded like the victim of a personality cult:
Except when I looked at the linked post, it didn't sound like that at all. Here's the beginning of the (long) relevant part of his post:
But then one person – who happens to be a physicist – wrote a back-of-the-envelop calculation of uBeam and said it’s not physically possible. His math was correct and I can hardly blame him for taking a guess at what uBeam does but every assumption that he used was wildly inaccurate. uBeam’s tech does work and I have safely seen it demo’d in the real life many times. Most of those that have been privileged enough to get a look at what they are actually doing have moved from skeptics to believers.
He goes on with standard PR-speak like that for quite a long time, then in comments briefly on the CEO's enthusiasm and determination. The way the FAQ-writer described it (by quoting only the small bit about her) made it sound like that's all the guy said.
But at least Suster is an investor, so he's supposed to be biased. The same can't be said for the tech press [laundry-list of positive things the media has said about the CEO, buried deep in their overall articles on the topic].
When I looked into the various links he had about the actual "problem" it turned out that his quotes were basically cherry-picked statements buried into overall articles about the company, technology, or a profile/interview sort of thing. It doesn't come across as somebody turning an industry into their own vehicle for PR or however he put it.
It sounds a hell of a lot like the guy either has a personal problem with the CEO, or is upset at seeing a female CEO being praised as a technical innovator. I hope that's not the case, but it really does come across that way.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:19PM
If it's intense enough to cause cavitation, ultrasound can open holes in cell membranes. Molecules that couldn't ordinarily cross the membrane suddenly can. One possible result is the death of the cell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoporation [wikipedia.org]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15121254 [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18334312 [nih.gov]