| This really does have a stench of scam and a whiff of foolish VC on it. But just like cold fusion you hope deep down that it might be possible. I took a look at the patents which are easily found by searching on google patents for ubeam as assignee and there just wasn't that much disclosed. Sort of vague references to steering a beam. It did not appear to be enough to 'enable one skilled in the art to practice the invention.' http://www.google.com/patents/US20150214764 (for example) I did notice one thing: mention is made of capactivie micro-machines ultrasonic transducers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_micromachined_ultra... which seem to be in the same family as the micromachined mirror arrays commonly used in DLP projectors. My only experience with ultrasonic is with piezo. One thing that I learned back then was that ultrasonics -bounce-. Aiming would be really, really hard. Not to mention that one thing people worry about in this field of steered array ultrasonics is 'necrosis' (which I don't like the sound of). Turns out that people use high powered steered beams to peer into peoples' skulls and to do things to the grey matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002099/ Even assuming arguendo that it would be possible to transmit measurable power via a steered ultrasonic beam, I certainly don't want to do it anywhere near my head! |