Microsoft Researchers Develop AutoCharge - A Prototype For Charging Smartphones Using Light

Most smartphones today struggle with short battery life issue. With an increase in the use of smartphones, charging them every day or multiple times a day is a necessity. Researchers are trying to find out different methods for charging the smartphones by making use of various sources other than electricity. Yunxin Liu, Zhen Qin and Chunshui Zhao from Microsoft Research's Beijing campus have tried to build a camera-based system that can charge the smartphones automatically by using a beam of light with little scattering (for improving charging efficiency and speed). The working prototype is known as AutoCharge that operates as a wireless charging system for smartphones.

Auto

The AutoCharge can be mounted on a ceiling, from where it can locate the smartphone when placed on a table below it. It uses a camera (from a Microsoft Kinect) and an image processing algorithm for the fast detection of a smartphone. After recognizing the handset in ‘detection mode’, the device enters into ‘charging mode’ by turning on its light. The light beam is generated by using an UltraFire CREE XM-L T6 Focusing LED Flashlight torch. Both camera and light can rotate for charging the handsets efficiently from an optimum angle.

Flowchart

The team has leveraged a mature solar charging technique and used it in indoor spaces. The photovoltaic (PV) panel present on the smartphone yields electricity from light. By using this generated electricity, the phone’s battery gets charged. The PV panel powers a microcontroller for checking the phone’s battery status and an LED in order to avoid the charging of a handset that has full battery or any other object whose shape and size is similar to a smartphone. If the battery requires charging then it blinks in a specific pattern with the help of the LED. The same LED is also used to indicate when no further charging is required.

In the research paper, the researchers have mentioned that the prototype implementation is still far away from a real product as the smartphones available in the market does not feature solar panels. You can have a detailed look at the research paper #-Link-Snipped-#.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-# via #-Link-Snipped-#

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