That's more than enough juice to supply an average laptop, said Marin Soljacic, a professor of physics at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who has been working on this project for several years.

The concept behind the technology is simple and based on the idea that two resonant objects on the same resonance frequency can exchange energy efficiently. For this experiment, the MIT team used electromagnetic resonators in the form of copper coils, which oscillated at a certain frequency, trading energy within a given electromagnetic field. One of the coils was attached to a power source.

The other acted as a receiver. The researchers, having proved that the technology dubbed "WiTricity" does work, plan to refine it to make it more efficient, although the range over which wireless power can be delivered probably won't extend beyond a room or a factory floor.

However, they are confident they can enhance the system and make it reliable enough so that consumers can dispense with power cords and even batteries for their laptops, PDAs, Blackberries or cellphones if they are being used in the same room as the power source.

"This is a major milestone," said Soljacic, commenting on the experiment, the details of which appear in the journal Science. "The technology is almost at the point where it could be used for a practical application."

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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