'WiTricity' system charges gadgets wirelessly from up to eight feet away - and could be in phones and tablets this year

Mobile phone users may finally be free of fiddling around for mobile phone chargers - an American company has created a wireless system that charges up phones in a handbag or suit pocket. 

The 'WiTricity' system works similarly to the chargers for electric toothbrushes, but over a distances of up to eight feet, using 'repeater pads' that send power through the home. 

The makers hope the technology could lead to vacuum cleaners that need no cable and electric cars which you simply park on top of a charger.

The WiTricity system uses 'resonator repeaters' which channel magnetic fields through the home to power up batteries via a receiver coil

The technology, which will start appearing in gadgets from later this year, could also be used for tablets and small games consoles.

The American company behind it hopes that gadget companies will make special batteries with receiver coils to work with the system - or gadgets such as vacuum cleaners built to work wirelessly.  

And in the future the researchers believe they may be able to charge electronic cars and even heart pumps via a similar connection.

The technology has been developed by the WiTricity Corporation in Watertown, Massachusetts in the US.

Eric Giler, the company’s chief executive, told the New York Times that it was based on the technology used to charge electronic toothbrushes, which is known as magnetic induction.

In the case of a toothbrush, the magnetic coil in the base creates a magnetic field which is caught by partner coil in the brush, causing it to charge up.

This only works within a short distance however because the primary coil is not that strong.

WiTricity expands this principle using a wireless connection so that it works up to several feet away, and perhaps even further.

The company has signed a deal with a semiconductor company in Taiwan to produce the coils, although the components will not be made available to the public.

If WiTricity is used by phone makers it will remove the pain of having to charge your mobile in public.

Douglas Stone, chairman of the Department of Applied Physics at Yale, said that technology had come along just at the right time.

He said: ‘The difference in what you can do when you charge at a very short range - essentially contact - and when you can do it at a meter or two, is huge’.