You will be able to charge all your ithingys and devices from your Wi-Fi router in the not too distant future. Researchers from the University of Washington are developing this innovative technology know as Power Over Wifi (POWiFi). The tech has been called a game changer as it would enable all our small devices to be charged on the go.
The team demonstrated this concept using using a small low-power Omnivision VGA camera placed 17 feet away from the wi-fi source. This allowed the camera to store enough energy to take an image every 35 mintues. It also re-charged the battery of a Jawbone Up24 wearable fitness tracker from zero to 41 percent in 2.5 hours.
“In the future, PoWi-Fi could leverage technology power scaling to further improve the efficiency of the system to enable operation at larger distances and power numerous more sensors and applications,” said co-author Shyam Gollakota, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.
The paper: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~gshyam/Papers/powifi.pdf
