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BOB HIRSHON (host):
Wireless car charging. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
Some small cordless appliances can charge up while being close to a charging station, without being plugged in themselves. But they have to be motionless. Now, Stanford electrical engineer Shanhui Fan and his colleagues report in the journal Nature on a technology to charge devices wirelessly on the move.
SHANHUI FAN (Stanford University):
You can think about, for example, transferring into a moving vehicle, or into any other moving objects.
HIRSHON:
Electric cars could charge up while driving over electrical coils embedded in a road, giving the cars essentially unlimited range.
FAN:
Another simple example is you have a device on your body that need to be charged.
HIRSHON:
Like cell phones that would charge as you walk around a room. The team is now working on increasing the power they can transfer to levels that would make these applications practical. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.
Story by Bob Hirshon