Imagine never again having to plug-in your cell phone, laptop, or iPod to recharge it. Imagine being able to get rid of those cluttered power strips, or that wire mess behind your computer. Well, the solution to these grievances may be coming soon.

Assistant Professor Martin Soljacic from the MIT Department of Physics and Research Laboratory of Electronics, together with grad student Aristeidis Karalis and Professor John Joannopoulos have developed a new system to wirelessly transmitting power to electronical devices, such as phones, handhelds and laptops.

The underlying concepts behind the system have been around for since the 1800’s, and there have been many experiments of varying success in an attempt to create a safe and useful system. Even Nikola Tesla experimented with the concept of wireless power, but failed to yield any practical results. There have also been other attempts using directional energy transfers with lasers, and induction based systems (which are used to charge electric toothbrushes).

The electromagnetic resonance system that the MIT researchers are working on is pretty similar to a radio antenna, except for a few differences: their system is not omni directional and transmits at a very low frequency, 4 to 10 megahertz. One very important element of any such system that might one day be used in a home or office environment is that it conserves as much energy as possible, which is what the MIT system does by keeping the energy close to the transmitter until it can be sent to a receiver. Most of the unused energy would be re-absorbed by the antenna and recycled.

The system doesn’t transmit, until another object with the same resonance frequency gets within its range of about 4 to 5 meters. Once the frequencies are synced the system causes the power to “tunnel” from one object to another, minimizing the loss of energy. Non-resonant objects, such as humans and pets, would not be affected by the system, making it very eco-friendly.

The applications for the MIT system are practically endless. The researchers are currently gearing their work towards home and small office use. Ideally, each room would be equipped with a transmitter to provide coverage of an entire building, and then any receiver equipped object within range, such as a laptop, cell phone, or iPod would have all of the power it needs to run.

The system could also alleviate many common nuisances of everyday living. For example, imagine that that your vacuum cleaner was cordless, or that your home telephone could never die because you forgot to put it back on the charger, or that you could get rid of all the cabling in your home theater or computing setup.