The final booth we needed to see at the 2007 International CES was the first application of a wireless charging technique called inductive coupling, or eCoupled Technology. eCoupled technology makes use of inductors and magnetic fields to produce a charge. It is simply an application of physics that hasn’t really been exploited commercially until this point in time. A company called Visteon licensed this technology from its creator, Fulton Innovations, and had several practical variations of it on display in their large tent outside in the Central Plaza. The setup was basically a car dashboard and a piece of a desk. On the car dashboard there were two different applications of the technology on display. The first was just a standard plug-in device like any cigarette lighter charger you have used in the past. The device is basically a docking station for something about the size of an iPod. You place your device on the docking station – no other cables are necessary – and it starts to charge. However, the device has to be equipped with a small adapter to harness the technology and charge the battery. These devices are not yet universal either, so every device you have will need its own adapter. The next implementation of the technology is a closed compartment built-in to the dashboard. This compartment takes up no more space than a CD player, and can hold three or four moderately sized devices at a time. You simply stick the device (with its adapter) into the compartment and it will start charging. Visteon also plans to incorporate Bluetooth into the adapters and charging stations so you do not lose all functionality of your device while it is charging.



Beyond the automobile applications of this technology, Visteon was also showing how they plan to implement eCoupled chargers in the home and business environments. The demo we saw consisted of a small plate built into a desktop on which you simply place your device. We think that such an implementation would be tremendously useful for professionals and home users alike, as devices like those that could benefit from this technology spend most of their time idle on a desktop somewhere.