Our engineering team is comprised of world-class multidisciplinary inventors, where the word “impossible” is not part of our lexicon. We take pride in solving complex technological problems quickly, across many fields. At uBeam, we go from PowerPoint to prototype in a month or less.
We’re on a mission to untether the world, and we’re in search of new blood to join the team. We’re seeking hands on, dedicated people who are driven to push the boundaries of technology, people who are not looking for a typical 9-to-5 desk job, who are looking to make tectonic shifts in the world of electricity.
About her new technological invention she says according to her website and USA Today, “I started looking into types of technology that harnessed ambient energy, and I stumbled across piezoelectric [material], and I thought, if this can harness vibration, how do I induce vibration over the air? Then I realized that sound is vibration over the air. It was a natural “aha.”
“The dream is to replace all electrical outlets with uBeam transmitters,” says Perry. “You’ll wake up and just go through your day with your device and it will be charging in your house, in your car, at your bus stop, at your gym, in your hotel. We want to be absolutely everywhere. And wires won’t be anywhere.”
Here’s how it works. uBeam’s transmitter is a wafer-thin square the size of a salad plate that punches out ultrasonic frequencies much like a speaker creates sound. The receiver, currently in the form of a smart phone case, resonates at the same high frequency and turns that imperceptible movement into energy, charging the phone.
uBeam’s transmitter doesn’t go through walls, so a square tile is required for each room. Although uBeam is still a few years from being consumer-ready, Perry is convinced her “competitively priced” creation will find its way into our homes and any commercial space where devices are used.
“What I’ve seen over the years is people making tiny improvements in existing technology as opposed to saying, ‘Let’s throw this all out and do something new,'” she says. “I know the odds are so against me. But I wouldn’t start a company and bust my (rear) for years unless we were working on something orders of magnitude better than anything else out there.”
http://www.fastcompany.com/3029523/most-creative-people-2014/meredith-perry
I love Meredith Perry’s attitude and the implications for her invention is quite extraordinary. It has a real chance of completely changing the way that power is transmitted from one place to another. It of course highlights the origin of power to begin with where the debate of Thorium as opposed to dirty energy is clearly a better option, but because of politics Thorium was suppressed as dirty energy was highlighted. There is a real danger of Perry’s invention being crushed by the status quo because it will completely change the way that homes and businesses are wired during construction. uBeam is certainly one of the biggest breakthroughs in science and technology that is currently on the frontier of discovery—and it came from a very young and ambitious young woman unafraid of the status quo—or her place in it. She is to me a remarkable young woman.
I would say that the best home for uBeam would be Apple, who has enough fluid cash to purchase all the big three auto companies in America right now. Only from such an innovative company would something as cutting edge like uBeam have a chance of cutting through the massive amount of lobby power that will try to sink them. It would give Apple a tremendous advantage over their competition such as Samsung for a few key years of future product rollouts. Obviously, uBeam would need to be available to all products, from the new Samsung televisions to their mobile devices—but Apple working with uBeam could corner that market to protect the wireless power market from the political machine that seeks to capture and regulate energy to throttle the cost and demand.
A company like uBeam is one step closer to my dream of every car, home, and personal power consumption device pulling free energy out of the air and being self-generated which is a real possibility. In our immediate lifetimes the debate will occur that the current power grid all across the world is old-fashioned and well out-dated. All power lines could be replaced with personal power devices—and that is a debate that will cause current power companies and the governments in their pocket a lot of heartache. Perry’s uBeam company is the gateway to such thinking and once people get a taste for it, they will accept it for everything from their washers and dryers, to their cars—and eventually their homes.
Ambient energy is important because it generates energy from everyday motions in life. uBeam is using ultrasonic waves to create energy, and it is entirely possible that the same could be done on a massive scale—just study an electrical storm during a spring rain where cold air strikes a front of warmer air provoking a violent storm. Such things have been tried before but were struck down politically because money could not be made on generating the power or the delivery method. When it comes down to something like what uBeam proposes, the technology is viable, clean, and much more efficient and reliable, but it will threaten the current infrastructure which will find it a threat to its very existence. So for the next step in wireless power transfer to occur it needs two things to happen—one of which it already has. It needs a fearless, smart, and charismatic young person who doesn’t understand the nature of defeat and is a rebel even by the standard of the Silicone Valley tech companies. Meredith Perry is the embodiment of such a person. The next thing it needs is a protective entity that has an immediate need for such a product as uBeam is producing. Apple or Google are among the only companies with the big guns to protect uBeam from the resistance that will surely come. If those two things can happen, the world just may change for the better.
Needless to say, I’m rooting for uBeam and its founder, Meredith Perry. She reminds me of my daughters who are the same age. There is a lot of hope in her, and I would hate to see that ambition crushed by a world protecting itself from its own insecurities. For that reason alone I’m ready to rip out all my outlets and convert over to uBeam technology. It’s just a matter of time.
Rich Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
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