Wireless charging was something that was often mentioned in my Electrodynamics lectures, but something that was far from practical yet.

Well Intel is ready to step up and push wireless charging into the future. While wireless charging has been used previously for charging smartphones (to what degree of success, perhaps some of our readers who have used the tech can comment?) but Intel is developing a system that will allow their new Ultrabooks to wirelessly charge on a platform that might even charge both your computer and smartphone at the same time.

Apparently the major selling point is that it will use low power consumption and it’s not too expensive. The engineers at Intel have apparently figured out how to integrate the transmitter and receiver into a single unit (not being an engineer myself, I’m not quite sure how significant this is, but it sounds rather compact).

These Ultrabooks are due to launch in the second half of 2013, so it’s some way off yet but that’s not really too far away.

What possibilities could you imagine for this tech? Being a recent student, I’m picturing lecture halls with built-in charging pads on the little desks, so that you can charge your computer as you take notes. Or making it so that under my desk you don’t see a big knot of the millions of cords that stream down towards my power board…I would definitely like to see this tech take off!

What was a cool suggestion from one of my lecturers when discussing wireless charging a few years ago, was to have an electric car that could wirelessly charge and then have your garage as a giant charging coil that charged your car while you slept at night. That would be cool, if the power required at the moment wasn’t so large that it wouldn’t be worth it. But a cool possibility if we perfect the technology, right? (A quick google search just turned up that the “Infinit Concept” cars are doing wireless charging via a pad!)

[Via Geek.com | Photo Credit]