Katie Hall was shocked the second she saw it : a light-bulb glowing in the middle of a room with no wires attached . Looking back , it was a crude experiment , she remembers : a tiny room filled with gigantic copper refrigerator coils -- the kind you 'd see if you cracked open the back of your freezer . She walked in and out between the coils and the bulb -- and still the bulb glowed . `` I said : 'Let 's work on this . This is the future . ' '' What 's the trick ? `` We 're going to transfer power without any kind of wires , '' says Dr Hall , now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity , a startup developing wireless `` resonance '' technology . `` But , we 're not actually putting electricity in the air . What we 're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air . '' It works like this : WiTricity builds a `` Source Resonator , '' a coil of electrical wire that generates a magnetic field when power is attached . If another coil is brought close , an electrical charge can be generated in it . No wires required . `` When you bring a device into that magnetic field , it induces a current in the device , and by that you 're able to transfer power , '' explains Dr Hall . And like that , the bulb lights up . Wireless homes . Do n't worry about getting zapped : Hall assures that the magnetic fields used to transfer energy are `` perfectly safe '' -- in fact , they are the same kind of fields used in Wi-Fi routers . In the house of the future , wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet . If all goes to WiTricity 's plans , smartphones will charge in your pocket as you wander around , televisions will flicker with no wires attached , and electric cars will refuel while sitting on the driveway . WiTricity has already demonstrated the ability to power laptops , cell-phones , and TVs by attaching resonator coils to batteries -- and an electric car refueler is reportedly in the works . Hall sees a bright future for the family without wires : . `` We just do n't think about it anymore : I 'm going to drive my car home and I 'm never going to have to go to the gas station and I 'm never going to have to plug it in . `` I ca n't even imagine how things will change when we live like that . '' World outside . Beyond these effort-saving applications , Hall sees more revolutionary steps . When Hall first saw the wireless bulb , she immediately thought of medical technology -- seeing that devices transplanted beneath the skin could be charged non-intrusively . WiTricity is now working with a medical company to recharge a left-ventricular assist device -- `` a heart-pump , essentially . '' The technology opens the door to any number of mobile electronic devices which have so far been held back by limited battery lives . `` The idea of eliminating cables would allow us to re-design things in ways that we have n't yet thought of , that 's just going to make our devices and everything that we interact with , that much more efficient , more practical and maybe even give brand new functionality . '' What 's next ? The challenge now is increasing the distance that power can be transferred efficiently . This distance -- Hall explains -- is linked to the size of the coil , and WiTricity wants to perfect the same long-distance transfers to today 's small-scale devices . For this reason , the team have high hopes for their new creation : AA-sized wirelessly rechargeable batteries . For Hall , the applications are endless : `` I always say kids will say : 'Why is it called wireless ? ' '' `` The kids that are growing up in a couple of years will never have to plug anything in again to charge it . '' *UPDATE ( March 17 ) It 's great to see so much discussion of this technology on social media and the comments thread . There seems to be a lot of interest in the contribution of Nikola Tesla 's experiments to the development of this technology . Dr Hall discussed Tesla briefly in her interview with Nick Glass : . Nick Glass : Given that Tesla and others realized all this over a Century ago , why 's it taken so long ? Dr Hall : I do n't think they realized exactly what we 've done . They were certainly dreaming of wireless power -- there 's no question about that . In those days , it was a different problem , because they were really thinking about : how do they get the power from where it 's generated to where it 's used . And in that case they might have been thinking about Niagara Falls generating the power and getting it to New York City -- and that 's a long distance . We 're not proposing that the technology we have here at WiTricity would be used for that kind of application . When we came around , power 's already being transferred by wires to homes and rooms and things of that nature , so we had a much different problem , which was really just this much shorter distance . As WiTricity has mentioned on its website , its Highly Resonant Wireless Power Transfer technology is also distinct from Tesla 's creations -- and is efficient enough to be economically viable .
Dr Katie Smith is developing technology to transmit power without wires . In the home of the future , wireless technology will be as common as Wi - Fi , she says . The technology will lead to new and revolutionary medical treatments .