Tesla's Revolution: Scientists Recharge Batteries Using Wireless Energy
Sounds pretty awesome, right? Finally, the Tesla dream of wireless energy is here. Hold on though, because it's not exactly what you think. You won't soon be able to charge your tablet or smart phone with existing Wi-Fi routers.
The authors of this piece of research claim that they operated a small camera 20 feet from a router. The camera used a Wi-Fi signal to charge a capacitor, allowing it to to snap an image every 35 minutes.
Technically, it could very well power a small device at some point. However, your phone still uses too much power for something like that to be effective. The average cell phone is about a million times more energy sucking than the tiny camera is.
Decades ago, Nikola Tesla pondered the possibility of a technology like this coming to life. He believed you could power things without wires. He didn't, however, invent anything that could. Now it looks like there's an opening to it being possible, but it's hard to say whether or not the technology will come to fruition.
Or if it will be allowed to come to fruition.
But it has been officially proven that we can charge things with Wi-Fi. Just not very energy intensive things.