Sending Energy through the Air

Cota

The ability to send power through the air sounds like science fiction, but it’s slowly but surely getting there – and Cota by Ossia looks like it has a chance to be the company that finally does it. Presented onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, the Cota wireless charging prototype managed to deliver power wirelessly to devices around three metres away, with around ten per cent of the original source power, using the same unlicensed spectrum which powers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Founded by physicist Hatem Zeine, Cota claims to be able to deliver one watt of power at a distance of nine metres, without requiring line-of-sight, and to be as safe as using Wi-Fi. During his presentation, Zeine showed an iPhone 5 being charge wirelessly with a prototype attached, and Zeine projects that we’ll see the Cota in consumer products by 2015.