Wireless Technology Coming Soon
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just sit your cell phone or your MP3 player on a spot on your desk and it would magically recharge without having to deal with all those pesky plugs and cords attached to the devices? Well, you may be able to do that in the near future, thanks to eCoupled wireless technology featured in June at NeoCon.
For the past five years, Herman Miller has been working in partnership with Fulton Innovation, the creators of this marvelous technology that transmits charges to devices using inductive coupling, eliminating the need for device-specific power adaptors.
eCoupled transmitters can be built into practically anything from desktops to kitchen countertops to car consoles, so you don’t even see it. You just lay your enabled device on the surface, and viola, it charges automatically.
Last month, a global interoperability standard, Qi 1.0 (pronounced “chee”), was launched for smaller “low power” devices. That means electronics manufacturers can now make their products compatible with eCoupled wireless charging transmitters. And that paves the way to putting those transmitters in things like work surfaces, shelving, and desk tops for charging small devices such as cell phones and iPods.
Standards for “medium power” devices, such as laptops, have not been issued yet, but hopefully that will happen within the next year.
I saw this type of technology demonstrated in a TED talk about a year ago. It was being speculated that eventually we would have all our household appliances powered remotely through inductive coupling devices running through the walls. I guess this is one of the first steps in making that a reality. That’s pretty exciting!
Daisy McCarty
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