Just shy of its 10th birthday and with between $40 and $48 million of investment (estimated), it appears uBeam (recently Sonic Energy) has shuffled off its mortal coil. While some may claim it's simply pining for the fjords or merely stunned, I've heard that a few weeks ago the last remaining employees were told they were terminated effective immediately and the doors were closed. Whether the company will actually be killed, or carry on in zombie form as an asset holding entity remains to be seen, but reportedly it will be OurCrowd, the crowdfunding group who were significant investors in the later rounds, that take possession.
I'm sure co-Founder and former CEO Perry will claim that the company was taken from her too soon and would have succeeded if only under her watch, or it was those pesky engineers just not implementing her vision, but to use her own phrase "Our industry is binary, your tech works, or it doesn't,". In this case, it doesn't.
So what did they have? From descriptions given to me by those who saw it in operation like prospective customers, there were moderately bulky panels that transferred power on the milliWatt level (a phone charges at ~1 Watt or more) at around a meter, with limited steering and tracking. I never got to hear any efficiency numbers, but I'd guess single digit % at best. Under those conditions the question to ask is "How long will a battery the size of the receiver last with the same milliWatt draw?" and as always "If it's not moving will a wire be simpler, cheaper, and more reliable?"
Where this might work is a low power demand system like remote sensors, you can get close to and in line of sight, that don't move much, where batteries aren't allowed, and you can't run a wire to. Pretty niche market.
Recent patent applications (not grants, here and here) show a system made up of hexagonal modules, each with a speaker like cone attached. I'd be interested in seeing a side by side comparison with the Murata S40 devices as it is a very similar principle, I suspect they would be comparable, perhaps slightly more narrowband, and a bit more expensive.
This doesn't even begin to address the question of safety - if it's at 145 dB it certainly exceeds limits in most countries and it looks like also in the US as of today. Further, the transducers are also quite wide, and unless they send most energy straightforward (which would limit steering) then they will generate grating lobes when used as an array and send energy at undesired directions. Perhaps now it's defunct uBeam can release the claimed studies by independent third parties that "proves" it is safe, but bizarrely were never made public.
It's shame that no-one sensible told the board in summer 2015, after "only" about $8 million had been spent, that leadership was taking the company in the wrong direction, increasingly "exaggerated claims" on performance were being made, and that a pivot was needed. But here we are - end of an era.
Wait, you mean the inherently linear thinking engineers were right?
ReplyDeleteTheranos indeed. So, the IP won't fetch anything either(?) since no patents were granted.
ReplyDeleteFirst love your stuff. Just wanted to comment that I think your statement "Where this might work is a low power demand system like remote sensors, you can get close to and in line of sight, that don't move much, where batteries aren't allowed, and you can't run a wire to. Pretty niche market." is optimistic. There are many Energy Harvesting technologies using waste energy like heat that can be used for these applications. In the ERA of ESG wasting 5X the energy to charge at might not cut it.
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