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[JZA]

Surprised it's the second page and I haven't seen any Westworld references yet.

 

[tuxfool]

So unless you've got everything right next to the pole you'll be wasting a ton of energy but hey at least you don't need to plug in 100% efficient wires anymore right?

Pretty much. It is the same issue as nearly all wireless power solutions. At least contactless solutions attempt to tune to the resonant frequency of the load in order to maximise efficiency.

These room scale solutions can't even do that because they have a bunch of different loads that they need to power.

 

[Shanlei91]

Surprised it's the second page and I haven't seen any Westworld references yet.

We got the Simpsons gif of the episode parodying the movie. I call that the ultimate win.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I knew they had a crap-ton of R&D, but were they rumored to be working on this at all? I know Apple and some others are, it's in the rumor mill all the time. Then Disney pops up and is all "Done!"

A lot of their research efforts obviously aren't public, you won't hear about something until a white paper is published or a talk given at a conference.

That said, wireless power charging isn't completely surprising given their continuing research efforts in wireless tech and robotics.

 

[Version 3.0]

Sounds efficient.

 

[v1lla21]

Damn who knew fast pass + would lead to cool shit like this!

Lol

 

[kadotsu]

But your phone won't work in that room.

They could modulate the signal on the energy wave. That would increase noise, though.

 

[Yabberwocky]

The Simpsons continues to foretell everything, god help us.

 

[JMizzlin]

I can understand why they're doing this. Slap a room like this in a gift shop and guests will spend an hour in there browsing while they're phone charges.

 

[ZehDon]

Interesting, but the requirement for the purpose built structures is going to limit the application quite a bit. Still, progress is progress.

 

[Mindlog]

My transducer lobe is tingling.

 

[Rygar 8 Bit]

just gotta turn your house into brightmans stage to get all that sweet electro juice

 

[Octavia]

Only for wireless charge supported phones right? So just iphone 5+ and everyone's flagships? You still need USB charge stations for the public in commercial use, I know my phone doesn't support wireless charging and it's not super old (moto g).

Also, I don't see a residential use for this at all unless it was like $50 and could be plugged in to 1 outlet. A surge protector with usb ports on it is $10 and a 3 pack of braided 15ft lighting/usb cables is $10. Or if you support and prefer, a wireless charge pad is $10. It's not like having whole room coverage for charging a phone is complicated, pricey, or hard right now as is.

 

[Dishwalla]

So this will be in the Disney resorts in a couple years right?

 

[demosthenes]

So Disney invented a pylon.

Ha!

 

[nickgia]

So now every attraction queue will have this.

 

[Boney]

 

[Deleted member 80556]

Finally scientists are catching up to Tesla!

Joking aside, this is pretty neat.

 

[Oppo]

But your phone won't work in that room.

yeah. faraday cage

would be hilarious if they said "this room has wireless charging. although it takes 24h. also you need to plug into this special jack to make a phone call or receive wifi"

folks really don't seem to have a grasp of the physics involved with this. it's a super old idea and there are pretty good reasons why we don't "have it" yet.

 

[sleverfunk]

There are no strings on me.

 

[RareFantasy64]

I didn't know Disney was involved with this stuff

 

[The Albatross]

Disney showing up out of nowhere

Aye -- Disney has a huge engineering department, but it's just that most of their innovations aren't then turned around for consumer-facing products, they're used in their parks, media, and IPs.

Disney is a major innovator in control systems, for instance.

 

[EloquentM]

They're actually very well known in the designer community for investing in "forward-thinking" design and experiences through their R&D labs.

I always wonder what else they've cooked up but haven't shown to anyone yet.

Cryogenics for Walt Disney's body of course.

 

[SRG01]

Disney's R&D groups have been around for a long while, though primarily in stuff like animation, simulation, robotics, or rendering.

https://www.disneyresearch.com/research-areas/

They've been getting stronger over the years as they get more acquisitions, like Pixar after that purchase, and ILM's R&D group after the Lucasfilm purchase (though ILM's group is technically separate from the rest of Disney research).

They have a lot of collaboration with academia as well.

The late Randy Pausch did a lot of collaborations with Disney with respect to Virtual Reality, I believe...

 

[Bsigg12]

Hopefully this could become an everyday product.

This plus the new Tesla solar roof with Powerwall 3.0 would be amazing for a modern home. Phones, tablets, laptops and other small devices would never need to be plugged in and the only things needing an outlet would be appliances or higher draw things like TVs, PCs, sound systems or game consoles.

 

[MetalGearZed]

.

oh god. lol Chuck is gonna lose it.

 

[Lmo911]

This tech is going to legitimize all those sci-fi movies where you just have to destroy the mother ship to make all the minions not work.

 

[Earthbound64]

And after a week, they'll "lock it up in the Disney Vault" for 10 years.

 

[Brazil]

Wireless leccy has been a thing in science/experiment.

Good to see it's coming to fruition for the common man though.

Not sure huge companies owning everything is good though.

If a startup had beat the huge companies to the punch, they'd be purchased faster than you can finish reading this post anyway.

 

[Aztechnology]

Basically that on a large scale...nothing special if you ask me.

So unless you've got everything right next to the pole you'll be wasting a ton of energy but hey at least you don't need to plug in 100% efficient wires anymore right?

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/magcur.html


Thanks, this the info I was waiting for. Easy to get excited on impulse.

 

[Linkura]

They need to add this shit to the parks. I need my cell phone power to keep refreshing for Fastpasses.

 

[ZoltanXerxes]

what

I have to read more about this

wireless power is Tesla's holy grail

Disney may have invented a good method but I am... skeptical. this sounds like some weird pillar-based version of induction which I can't imagine would be good for people with, say, metal fillings or pins in their hips or what have you

"room circled by capacitors" makes my eyebrows go up in a Disneyesque way

What they essentially have created is a large but weak transformer. The 1.32 Mhz is the initial resonance frequency and the capacitors on the pole are to alter the frequency to whatever they want (normally capacitors change AC to DC but clearly from the animation in the first video, it is an AC signal since the voltage alternates, and this makes sense, because you can't transmit DC power through the air).

If you look closely, in the first video, everything has a coil of wire attached to it. This is because the magnetic field needs a coil of wire to interact with to create the power needed to run the objects the use (LEDs, 5 watt fan, and iPhone). They also do not tell you what voltage the signal generator is running at or any other information, which is unfortunate.

What is also unfortunate is that you will need a lot more power to charge more than a couple things and in addition, each object like the iPhone will have to be modified to accept power in this manner. This thing can apparently power anything up to 5 Watts DC. (5 Volts, with a max of 1 AMP) and can possibly only charge a couple of them at a time since 2 iPhones will take 10 Watts DC to charge with each iPhone increasing the wattage by 5.

This is an interesting experiment but is no where a practical method of wireless power.

 

[EulaCapra]

Kingdom Hearts: Quasistatic Cavity Resonance

 

[Mac the KNife]

Disney's going to invent a combustible lemon to burn your house down.

 

[sirap]

That Disney money is something else.

Crystal Dynamics got a little taste of dat good shit.

 

[Javaman]

It's typical EM -> AC, with high gain antenna, nothing special. The trick is they lowered the noise floor with the faraday cage room.

The power required is cubed whenever you double the distance iirc. I'm going to remain highly skeptical until I see how much charge rate they are actually producing. I doubt it would even be enough to light a phone screen. Will it be directional and focus on people moving around or fill a 360 sphere at all times where only a small fraction of a percent is actually being used and the rest lost energy?

 

[Generic Power Ranger]

Put this on stretches of road spread evenly around to charge electrical cars while driving solves both mileage and charging issues.

 

[nubbe]

Bonus benefit is that it cures and cause cancer too

 

[The Faceless Master]

But your phone won't work in that room.

move an ethernet anchored wireless access point into the room and hope your device supports wireless calling

 

[Masterspeed]

I can't wait for the next decade where Disney announces their new Disney gaming console.... Fuck, that would be so awesome with their funding.

 

[Koren]

How do you feel about solar power?

Well, it's a fine tech, but if I spend more than a couple dozen minutes outside without protection on any day the sun is bright, I'm burned... Solar energy isn't safe for humans...

yeah, me too. seems like a potentially dangerous setup, but maybe a physics major can come along and make me look stupid for being worried.

Well, I have it, and I'm not sure I want something like this at home, even for convenience.

 

[superbeau]

sorry if i missed the discussion already but this is what electric cars need to really take off unless batteries get way better