How Real Wireless Power Will Create the Next Generation Shift
The dreaded need to “charge”: all of our current portable electronics — not to mention sensors and IoT — require some time with an electrical plug (or replacement of disposable batteries) to charge up and be ready to go.
If we think it’s a burden now, consider the very near future, as more and more small and useful inventions are created that need power. Safety sensors in vehicles, appliances, and machinery. Implantable medical devices that assist with hearing, heart rate, and blood sugar. Data providing sensors in buildings, streets, and inventory. As our world becomes more interconnected, so does our need for continuous, reliable power. Power that we don’t have to think about.
Can you imagine what the next generation will experience, with more and more tools and technologies that require consistent power? If you think these youngsters will be chasing down charging cables, pads, and plugs every time they get an alert that a device is going to “shut down” or “go to sleep soon,” this isn’t likely. In fact, low-power alerts will soon be one of those nostalgic things of the past, like waiting for movie DVDs by mail, rewinding cassette tapes, and listening to that dial-up Internet connection sound for hours.
Our children or perhaps children’s children will never know the need to charge because charging and replacing batteries will become obsolete. The more common way for all of our hundreds of devices, sensors, and technologies to receive power will be invisible, automatic, and continuous.
If you haven’t already guessed, I’m talking about wireless power that is transmitted over air, much like WIFI is today.
WIFI technology shifted the world by enabling a slew of conveniences: wireless cameras, wireless movie streaming, wireless music and information over smart speakers that we actually speak to are all commonplace now. No one expects to wrestle with multiple cables to connect all their devices to an Internet modem.
The next step is to eliminate the need to charge all those devices. Wireless power, like Ossia’s working technology, Cota, is changing our world yet again. Virtually unknown to consumers today, Cota is being applied to a variety of FCC-certified commercial applications to eliminate the burden of remembering to charge as well as the panic-causing 10% battery warning.
Once adopted in the commercial world, Cota will begin to permeate our consumer electronics world and will transform the way we live, work, and play.
Look at the room around you. Consider the benefits of eliminating all the work that went into wiring lights, switches, doorbells, and outlets. And all those small devices that require a USB or lightning cable, a charging pad, a watch battery, or even rechargeable AA batteries? In the future, those devices will no longer need them.
When I look around, I see TV and ceiling fan remote controls, gaming controllers, clocks, thermostats, smart speakers, humidifiers, and doorbell cameras. I can also imagine hundreds of sensors deep inside the IoT around me, like the appliances, the garage door, the car in the garage. All of these technologies that draw low levels of power on a continuous basis will eventually be powered wirelessly.
Wireless power is going to become so ubiquitous that the next generation will not know of a world of charging cables and low battery power warnings. They will be safer because of it; they will also be more productive. They will have more inventions created in their lifetime because of the flexibility that wireless power enables.
What does it take to get there?
We have the proven technology: Cota. We have real-world use cases in motion across different commercial applications. Next, we need even more innovative and forward-thinking businesses to step up and consider how wireless power technology can make their employees safer and more productive and how wireless power like Cota can make their processes more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective, and their products more open to innovation. Those companies that set themselves up early for wireless power integrations will have a distinct competitive advantage.
With these real-world ideas firmly in place, we can create the partnerships to apply Ossia’s patented technology to a manufactured product and the ecosystem to deliver the power over air. More and more businesses will adopt the technology. More FCC certifications for additional applications will be approved.
And the world will shift once more.
