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Cota-Batteries

The Consumer Electronics Evidence (CES), if you've never seen it, is a frantic grab-bag of agonized feet, glitzy product demos, hotel and conference middle meetings, and a handful of major keynotes and presentations. For every breakthrough product, there's a score of inexpensive imitations and bad ideas. But every now and and so, a company shows up with an idea that surprises you lot — and the Forever Battery and its associated technology, dubbed Cota, could be a heck of a production one day.

The battery company Ossia has developed a method of wireless power transmission that they claim can proceed a AA battery charged up (that's the epitome above) or provide ability to a smartphone that either incorporates Cota'southward technology natively or uses a specific charging case. Ossia hasn't revealed much virtually how Cota works, beyond making a vague reference to information technology working like Wi-Fi (not particularly helpful). According to Ossia, Cota works because the Cota Transmitter contains dozens of tiny RF antennas, with similar antennas mounted within the AA battery, charging example, or hypothetical smartphone.

Using these antennas, the Cota transmitter is able to triangulate and lock on to the Cota Receiver. It then calculates the best signal path and transmits your wireless ability accordingly. Co-ordinate to Ossia (which developed its own engineering science simply licenses it to other companies), Cota works while moving, around corners, beyond line-of-sight, and regardless of people or objects in the style — within reason, 1 presumes. Your giant collection of lead pipes from Roman Empire-era sewers might yet give the poor matter fits. [Where exactly exercise y'all live again, Joel? -Ed]

Ossia-Works

Ossia'due south Cota-powered Forever Battery is intended to make a device compatible with the Cota Transmitter, even if the device doesn't include native support. Theoretically, one could use them in Tv set remotes, game controllers, AA-powered IoT devices, or whatever other product that requires normal AA batteries. In all honesty, it sounds pretty cool. Whether it'll exist successful is another question entirely.

There are already two other wireless ability standards: Qi and Rezence. Ossia patently represents yet another potential standard. And while the dream of effortless wireless charging is a potent i, nosotros demand to know more than well-nigh issues like transmitter range, power consumption, and how the system handles higher power describe from the Cota Forever Battery itself. Information technology'due south one affair to provide enough power to charge an idle cell phone from a foot away, and something else entirely to provide sufficient ability to bulldoze a game controller from a longer distance. The answers to these questions will reply just how revolutionary Ossia and its Cota technology actually is.