WiTricity is an MIT spin-off company that is commercializing wireless transfer of electricity. The technology is an implementation of a very old idea: if you think of an electricy transformer having two coils inside it, you will realize that power is transfered from one coil to the other, but without them touching each other. The WiTricity system is a lot like that, but instead of having the coils millimeters apart, they are a few meters apart.

What can it do? A lot. The image below shows the demonstration of their wireless electrical power transfer. The coil on the left is the source coil and it creates a magnetic field that the coil on the right is fine-tuned to capture. The transfer of power from the left coil to the right coil is sufficient to power a 60-Watt light bulb which you can see hanging off the right coil.

WiTricty demo of lighting a 60W bulb at a distance of 2m. The induction coils are hung from the ceiling, and the 60W light bulb is attached to the coil on the right.

Wireless Power Transfer via Strongly Coupled Magnetic Resonances, Science Kurs et al. 317 (5834): 83, supplemental info.

Although powering a light bulb is useful, WiTricity’s system can do more. The 10-minute video below explains the technology and then shows the system powering an LCD television and mobile phones. All without wires!

There is more info in the Science magazine paper the MIT published and its supplementary information. There is also the BBC coverage video, and of course, WiTricity’s website.