25歲美女發明家無線充電器

Meredith Perry is tired of wires.
梅雷迪斯o佩裏已經受夠了各種充電線。

The 25-year-old was still an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania when she built the first model of her wireless charging system and demonstrated it at the All Things Digital conference in 2011. (“It was basically like two toaster-sized boxes that were two feet apart, and we showed that you could beam a certain amount of power over that distance with ultrasound,” she says.) Its name? uBeam.
2011年，現在25歲的佩裏還是賓西法尼亞大學的一名本科生。就在那一年，她發明了她的第一款無線充電系統，並在All Things Digital科技峯會上展示了一番。（她介紹說，“它基本上是由兩臺烤箱大小的盒子組成，相距兩英尺遠，我們在峯會上展示了一下如何通過超聲波將電能跨越那段距離輸送過去。”）這款設備叫做uBeam。

Now a company in its own right, uBeam says it has a working prototype and could have a product on store shelves within two years. There are other wireless charging systems already out there—Qi, for example, charges your phone as long as it sits on or inches away from a small base—but Perry believes uBeam’s technology is superior to all competitors. As part of the Shape the Future package in the January 2015 issue of Fortune, Perry, who lives in Los Angeles, sat down for a long conversation by phone about how she created uBeam and her vision of other future technologies. What follows is an edited transcript.
現在，這家名爲uBeam的公司表示，它正在研製一款可能在兩年內就會上市的原型產品。目前市面上已經有了一些無線充電產品。比如，只要你把手機放在一個小基座上，或者離它幾英寸遠，一種名爲Qi的系統就可以給手機無線充電。不過佩裏認爲uBeam的技術比所有競爭對手都要先進。作爲2015年1月《財富》雜誌“塑造未來”系列文章的組成部分，佩裏在洛杉磯接受了長時間的電話專訪，暢談了她一手創建的uBeam，以及她對其它未來技術的看法。以下是經過編輯的採訪實錄。

Fortune: Let’s go to a few years ago when you were first beginning to work on uBeam. What was the invention process like?
財富：首先，請談談幾年前你剛開始研究uBeam時的情形。發明的過程是什麼樣的？

Meredith Perry: To create something really new is extremely difficult, because there’s no protocol. I can’t Google it online and find, “These are the steps that need to be taken,” or, “When somebody created something similar, these are the questions they asked, these are the people they talked to, and these are the materials they used.” Sometimes you have to create your own materials, your own design, your own manufacturing process. You have to create your own shipping materials that can cover the parts that you built. And we were building all of these tiny little devices by hand. We 3-D-printed tools that were useful in creating these devices. For example, we needed a holder that could hold a certain amount of micro beads. So that’s the level of minutiae you have to get involved with in order to actually execute on something that hasn’t been done before.
梅雷迪斯o佩裏：發明某個全新的東西是極爲困難的，因爲沒有原型可以參考。不是說你在谷歌上一搜索，就會顯示“需要採取如下步驟，”或者“當某人發明了類似的東西時，他們問了這幾個問題，諮詢了那幾個人，這些是他們用過的材料”。有時你必須創造你自己的材料、你自己的設計以及生產工藝。而且你的材料必須涵蓋你要製造的零部件。這些小設備當時都是我們手工製作的。有些對發明這些設備有益的工具，則是採用3D技術打印的。比如，我們需要製作一個容器來放一定量的微珠。爲了完成某件從前沒有人做過的事情，你必須要做好這些微小的細節。

In the beginning I looked at every possible option. I just wanted to solve a problem. And that was: I don’t want to plug in my laptop anymore. I want to be able to move around a room and use all my devices without plugging them in. And I learned that ultrasound was the only type of technology that would work for the experience we are trying to give, which is the Wi-Fi for charging.
最開始，我幾乎看過了每個可能的方案。我只是想解決一個問題，而那個問題就是：我不想再給我的筆記本電腦插電了。我想在一個房間裏隨時隨地使用我的所有設備，而不用給它們充電。我瞭解到，超聲波是唯一一種能夠提供我們想要的無線充電體驗的技術。

Then I basically stopped at what materials we needed to make that happen—they’re called transducers, which convert electrical energy into sound and sound back into electricity. I knew that for this project to work, I needed the right transducer, and a transmitter that needs to have this amount of power and be able to beam that power across the room and hit these targets, and so on.
然後，我基本上停頓在這種技術所需要的材料上——這種材料叫做“換能器”，它可以把電能轉化成聲波，再把聲波轉化爲電能。我知道這個項目要想成功，必須要有正確的換能器，另外還得有一個能發射足夠額度電能的發射機，等等。

And that existed already?
這些是否已經有了？

Yes, transducers are used in speakers. And that’s effectively what uBeam is: a speaker. To make sound, in general you plug in a speaker, which is a bunch of sonic transducers. And we’re using ultrasonic transducers, which is sound above what you can hear. So when you plug in a speaker, you’re taking electricity from a wall, and the electricity is converted into sound, and that sound travels through the air. You’re converting electrical energy into acoustic energy. So that already exists. But a speaker is radiating out sound in 360 degrees, and you’re not going to get that much power from sound unless you focus it. So you have to do the same thing you would do with a laser beam, or with a light bulb—you take the energy and funnel it into a cone. But we’re not physically focusing it, we’re digitally focusing it. So we had to create a transmitter that digitally focuses sound to get enough power out of our ultrasonic speaker across the room. So the whole concept of uBeam worked because I knew that transducers existed. It was just a matter of thinking about sound as a form of energy, which people don’t often think about.
是的，換能器被用在揚聲器中。而且其實uBeam本質上就是個揚聲器。爲了發出聲波，你要先給一個揚聲器通電，這個揚聲器包含了很多聲波換能器。我們使用的是超聲波換能器，它的音頻是人耳聽不到的。所以當你把這個揚聲器通電後，你可以從牆上的電源獲得電力，然後電力會被轉化爲聲波，聲波會在空氣中運動，這樣你就把電能變成了聲能。這種技術已經存在了。但是揚聲器是360度輻射的，這樣散射的聲波沒法產生足夠的能量，除非你讓它集中起來。所以你要做的事情就是像激光或電燈一樣，要用一個漏斗體讓它聚焦。但我們並沒有採用物理設備讓它聚焦，而是利用數字技術讓它聚焦。所以我們必須構建一個能令聲音進行數字聚焦的發射機，讓我們的超聲波揚聲器能發出足夠的能量貫穿整個房間。所以uBeam的理念之所以有效，就是因爲我知道換能器是存在的。所以你只需要把聲波想成一種能量即可，只是人們通常想不到這一點。

Anyway. I’m kind of going into weird details about this.
關於這個東西我好像說得太過細節了，聽起來有點奇怪吧。

No, it’s fascinating. Let’s talk more about the general process. What was your work method?
不，它非常有意思。讓我們多說說它的一般程序。你的工作方法是怎樣的？

Well, back in 2012, we had raised a bunch of money, I had this whole plan planned out, but it was extremely difficult because I was working with only contractors. Up until a few months ago, even. Until we raised our Series A [funding round, totaling $10 million and led by Upfront Ventures] we didn’t have any full-time employees except me. So what I did was broke apart the technology into its pieces. I had people working on the transmitter, and there are the electronics behind the transmitter, so I contracted people to create the electronics behind the transmitter. Then I did tons and tons of research to figure out, “What is the most powerful, in-air, ultrasonic transducer I can get?” There are a zillion different types of ultrasonic transducers. Most are made for medical purposes, like sonograms. Then there are people that have designed transducers for cars, like when you back up and you hear the “beep beep.” Then there are transducers you use underwater for sonar, like on a submarine. I needed to figure out which is the best transducer I can use that will beam power through the air. And of course, nothing had been created before that was even close.
在2012年的時候，我們融到了不少資金，我已經有了整個計劃，但整個過程還是極爲艱難的，因爲當時我只能與承包商合作。甚至一直到幾個月之前還是這樣。一直到A輪融資結束（該公司獲得了由Upfront Ventures公司領投的1000萬美金），除了我自己以外，我們甚至連一名全職員工都沒有。所以我只好把技術分成一塊一塊的。有人專門做發射機，發射機後面還有一些電子元件，所以我又跟人簽了合同，讓他們去做發射機後面的電子元件。然後我做了大量的研究，試圖找出我能獲得的最強大的超聲波換能器。超聲波換能器的種類數不勝數，大多數都用於醫療用途，比如超聲波掃描。另外還有人設計了汽車用的超聲換能器，比如倒車雷達。還有一些是用於水下定位的，比如潛艇用的那種。我需要確定哪種換能器是我需要的，也就是能夠通過空氣傳遞能量。當然，在此之前從來沒有人做出過哪怕與它比較接近的東西。

There was one type of transducer that came out of a university, and it was kind of close, all we had to do was change this, this, and this, and theoretically we should be able to output the power we need using this design… so I contracted the people that wrote those papers to design those transducers. Then I needed someone to design the transmitter transducer, but I also needed someone else to design the receiver transducer, which would capture the energy. So I had individual people working on individual parts of the system.
有一個大學做過一種換能器，它算是比較接近了，但是我們也得對它改了又改。理論上我們可以通過這個設計傳遞能量……所以我聯繫了這些論文的作者，請他們設計這些換能器。然後我需要有人設計發射換能器，同時我也需要有人來設計接收換能器。所以我是讓不同的人來設計系統的不同部分。

It sounds almost like an assembly line.
聽起來像一條組裝線。

Right. But it was very difficult because everybody was remote. That was the challenge of the way I set it up. But I could not get anyone to come on full-time. And I didn’t necessarily need anyone to come on full-time, I just needed each person to finish their one part.
是的，但這個過程很困難，因爲每個人都離我很遠。這也是我的工作方法所帶來的挑戰。但是我沒法讓任何人來全職工作，而且我也沒有必要讓任何人來全職工作，我只需要每個人完成他們那一部分就可以了。

The part we couldn’t crack was the transducer. It took us a total of 14 months working on that one particular problem.
最難啃的骨頭就是換能器，這個問題花了我們整整14個星期的時間。

But that one part is the core engine, isn’t it?
但這個部分正是核心引擎，是嗎？

Well, for a system to function each part needs to work, but ultimately this piece is the heartbeat, yes.
一個系統要想工作，每個零部件都得工作才行，但最終這個部分是它的心臟，所以是的。

So then it makes sense that the transducer took the longest.
所以說，換能器花了最長的時間是也有道理的。

Yes, but I didn’t realize just how hard it would be.
是的，但當時我沒意識到它會這麼艱難。

Had no one ever tried wireless charging before?
之前沒有人嘗試過無線充電嗎？

Wireless charging as a category absolutely has been tried before and is being done by multiple parties using different technologies. But in terms of ultrasonic power, no. Anything that can be beamed through the air can be converted into a usable type of energy. So, people have tried laser for wireless power, but lasers can blind you. And then there’s [Duracell] Powermat, which uses induction and is magnetic, so you stick your phone on a mat and it charges. I don’t consider that true wireless power. Then with magnetic resonance coupling, which a company called WiTricity is using, it’s a totally viable technology but it’s only effective in charging really large objects over really short distances. If you want to charge something that way at a greater distance, you need receivers that are larger than the device you’re charging, so there’s a convenience issue.
無線充電作爲一種技術門類，當然肯定已經有人嘗試過了，而且是被很多人使用很多不同的技術嘗試過了。但在超聲波這一塊還沒人嘗試過。任何能被髮射到空氣中的東西都可以被轉換爲某種可用能源。因此人們已經嘗試過用激光無線充電，但激光可以致盲。此外還有一家叫Powermat的公司使用了電磁技術，你可以把手機放在一張充電墊上實現充電。但我認爲它還不是真正的無線充電。另外一家名叫WiTricity的公司還使用了電磁共振耦合技術，這也是一種完全具有可行性的技術，但它只在給距離很近的大型物體充電時纔有效。如果你想在更遠的距離上給設備充電，那麼它的接收器要比你想充電的設備還要大。所以還存在一個便利性問題。

So at the end of the day, ultrasound is the only technology that is safe, that can travel the distance, that can charge your device, while remaining small and compact. Ultrasonic is the only type of energy that can be commercialized for consumer devices.
因此，歸根到底，超聲波是唯一一個既安全又可以遠距離充電的技術，同時又可以保持設備的小巧緊湊。超聲波是唯一一種能夠用於消費電子產品的具有商用前景的無線充電技術。

Well, with one hurdle being that it doesn’t work through walls, like Wi-Fi does.
但是它也有一個缺陷，就是沒有辦法像Wi-Fi那樣穿牆。

Well, it’s not necessarily a hurdle if you look at the positives. It’s what makes ultrasound the most secure data transmission system in existence.
不過，如果你看看它的好處的話，這也未必算一種缺陷。正是這種特性，使得超聲波成爲目前最安全的數據傳輸系統。

But, pie-in-the-sky hope, you’d want it to work through walls, right?
但是你還是希望它能夠穿牆的，對嗎？

Oh, of course. But it’s physically impossible. If it were possible, I would take that over the secure data transmission. But even working in one room, think about where that can be applied. Not only within homes and rooms, but think about airports, conference halls, concerts. And you can charge an arbitrary number of devices at any time.
當然，但它在物理上是不可能的。如果真有這種可能，我認爲它可能會損害數據傳輸的安全性。但即便它只能在室內使用，你也不妨妨想想它的應用前景。它不僅可以在家庭和辦公室使用，同時也可以用於機場、會議廳、音樂廳等等。而且你隨時都可以給任意數量的設備充電。

You first raised big funding when uBeam was in really early stages. Did you feel a lot of pressure and urgency?
當uBeam還處於非常早期的研發階段時，你就獲得了融資。當時你的壓力和緊迫感是否很大？

There was a sense of insane urgency throughout the entire process. And I pushed and pushed and pushed, but you can only push so hard. I had set myself an artificial deadline, and I was continuously disappointed that I wasn’t hitting that. But in speaking with people who had created new technologies before, they would say, “Holy crap, you did that in two years? That’s incredibly short.” In my mind, we were like dinosaurs already, but people who have actually experienced creating new technology before said this was actually pretty fast. But the process killed me. People would check in and ask our progress, but to explain what was actually taking so long would take hours.
在整個過程中，我都有一種近似瘋狂的緊迫感。我不斷地向前推動它，但你能做的也就是用力推動它而已。我給自己設定了一個時間線，但由於無法滿足它，因此我經常感到失望。但是在與發明過新技術的人聊天時，他們會說：“天哪，你用了兩年就把它做出來了？時間短得令人難以置信。”在我看來，我們花的時間像恐龍時代一樣漫長，不過對於那些真正經歷過發明創造的人來說，他們會覺得這個過程已經很快了。但是這個過程痛苦死了。人們會過來問我們的進展，但是光要解釋哪個流程要花這麼長時間，就得花上幾個小時。

Was that frustrating?
這個過程令人沮喪嗎？

Of course. And the other thing is that throughout the process, I always thought, “Okay, it’s going to work in three months. We’ve got this great new idea to make this transducer function.” So instead of giving someone an update I’d say I’ll tell you in one month. But then we’d fail, and then we’d say we will make a certain change, and then it will work, and that happened about five times. It took about three months to make each change. It was extraordinarily expensive every single time we wanted to make a change to the device. And the lag time was mind-boggling. When you fail five times but you take tiny steps forward each time, it keeps you going. You can stay positive because there’s still light at the end of the tunnel. But at the same time, it really wears you down. You constantly have to think, “Okay, so if this next option doesn’t work, what will we do?” And you just can’t stop until you accomplish your goal. What really kept me going through the entire process was, “Even though this is so hard, it’s still possible.” And I knew that if it was still possible, I had to do it, because it would be so huge. I know that if I was working on something smaller, or something that I didn’t believe could make such an impact on the world then I wouldn’t have been able to keep going through those times.
當然。這種沮喪感貫穿整個研發過程，我總是想：“好吧，三個月裏就會見效果，我們已經有了很好的新點子來讓這個換能器出效果。”所以有人問時，我不會馬上給他反饋，而是說我會在一個月內告訴你。不過後來我們失敗了，然後我們會說，我們要做一些改變，這樣它就能出效果。這種情況大概重複了五次，每次改變都需要三個月的時間。每次我們想對設備做出某種改變，代價都是極爲高昂的。而且它拖延的時間也是非常長的。當你失敗了五次，但每次都取得了某些微小的進步時，它依然促使着你繼續前進，你仍然可以保持樂觀，因爲前方已經出現曙光了。但與此同時，它也的確令你感到心力交瘁。你會不停地想：“如果下次還不成功，我們該怎麼辦？”在最終實現你的目標之前，你根本停不下來。真正使我熬過整個過程的是這種想法：“儘管它很難，但它是可能實現的。”我知道只要它是可能的，我就必須做下去，因爲它是一件意義非常重大的事。如果我做的是某件稍小的事，或是某件我覺得不會對全世界產生如此大影響的事，那麼在這些時候，我可能就堅持不下去了。

So one of our contractors we brought on, who is is now our CTO, created an entirely new type of transducer during our 14-month marathon of death— it ended up working on the first try. We were running out of money. We had two designs running in parallel, and we knew one of them had to work or we’d be screwed. In the end, both designs worked, but his was so much cheaper and so much more powerful that we went with his.
最後，我們的一位承包商，也就是我們的現任CTO，經過長達14個月的“死亡馬拉松”，終於開發出一種全新的換能器。當時我們已經沒有資金了，我們同時在測試兩個設計，我們知道其中一個必須成功，否則的話，我們就徹底玩完了。最後，兩個設計都成功了，但他的設計要便宜得多，也強大得多，所以最後我們採用了他的方案。

Take me to the moment when the prototype worked successfully, if there was one big moment.
說說原型產品成功的那一刻，如果存在某個重要時刻的話。

It was when our CTO’s transducer worked. To paint the picture of what life was like at that time: for six and a half months, from December 2013 through June 2014, I was basically living in the tiny garage of my CTO in northern Virginia. It was the worst winter of my entire life, and we spent 10 hours a day just like little Foxconn workers in this garage with no windows, breathing in toxic fumes and trying to get this thing to work over and over and over again.
那就是我們CTO的換能器開始奏效那一刻。我給你描繪一下我在那段時日的生活狀態：從2013年12月到2014年6月的六個半月裏，我基本上都是住在我們公司CTO那間位於在北弗吉尼亞的小車庫裏。那是我整個人生中最糟糕的一個冬季，我們就像富士康工廠的工人一樣，每天要在那間沒有窗戶的小車庫裏工作10小時，呼吸着有毒的氣體，一遍又一遍地反覆嘗試。

It was either in April or May when we tested out the hybrid, it worked, and I literally screamed for joy. I had the biggest smile on my face because I knew that the future was bright. We knew it was real, it’s going to work, we proved the last piece that we needed to prove.
到了四月或五月，我們終於測試了最後的產品，而且它成功了，毫不誇張地說，我快樂得尖叫了起來。我的臉上掛着最大的笑容，因爲我知道前途是光明的。我們知道這是真的，它會成功的，我們驗證了需要驗證的最後一步。

And now we all just wait for it to come out.
現在我們都在等它上市銷售。

Yes. Most of the world still doesn’t know about this, which is awesome. So we’re going to release it when we release it, and it’ll be something completely new, and I think that the world will be delighted by the experience.
是的，全世界大多數人還不知道它，但它的確很贊。所以我們會選擇合適的時機舉行發佈會，它會成爲一種全新的技術，我認爲全世界都會因爲這種體驗而感到興奮。

Looking toward the future, what are some of other existing or eventual technologies that excite and interest you?
放眼未來，在現有或可能出現的技術中，有哪些讓你興奮或感興趣？

There are a few. And I’ll try to be quick because I get a little too excited. They span between health and transportation and 3-D holograms. So, last year I got really into the idea of creating 3-D, touchable holograms in the air using fog. I wanted to create a system where you could be sitting next to somebody who is in China but could actually touch them, see them, feel them. I built a bunch of hologram machines, which was cool.
有一些。我會快點說，因爲我有點太興奮了。這些技術主要在健康、運輸和3D全息技術領域。去年我對利用光霧效果建立3D全息影像的技術非常感興趣。我想構建這樣一個系統：你坐在這裏，而你旁邊那個人其實身在中國，但你可以觸摸他、看到他、感覺他。我製造了很多全息投影儀，它們也很酷。

Is this different from the Tupac hologram at Coachella in 2012?
它與2012年科切拉音樂節上已故歌手圖派克的全息投影有什麼區別嗎？

Yeah. This would actually be a three-dimensional display, not just a projection. That’s one thing, the other is I think that people should have some kind of embedded blood sensor that reads your levels continuously. To me, it’s kind of crazy that only once people feel really crappy, they go to a doctor and find out what’s wrong with them. Why don’t we have some sensor built into the body that lets you know before you feel ill, and ultimately, is connected to an embedded dispensary that can put sugar into your body if your glucose is low? You basically would have an external, but embedded, automatic system that regulates your body.
是的，有區別。它是真正的三維影像，而不僅僅是一個投影。另一種技術是，我覺得人們應該在身體裏植入某種血液傳感器，不間斷地監測你的體徵指標。現在人們只有在很難受的時候纔去看醫生。爲什麼我們不在身體裏植入一個傳感器，在症狀顯現出來之前就給我們發送警報呢？另外，這個傳感器還可以與嵌入式“藥箱”搭配使用，比如說當人體處於低糖狀態時，它就會自動向身體提供糖分。也就是說，你會有一個外部的，但同時又是嵌入式的自動化系統來管理你的身體健康。

This sound like the first step in making us all half-robot, though…
這聽起來像是人體半機器人化的第一步。

Right! Yes. What I think is crazy is we have so much data and insight into our digital world, but we have no insight into what’s actually going on inside the most important system of all, our bodies. And then, finally, curing cancer is a big one. If it’s not curable, we need to make MRI machines that detect lumps and growths much smaller than what they can detect right now. Part of the reason we detect cancer at stages where it’s a little too late is that the machines that detect cancer can only see lumps of a certain size. If we were able to detect cancerous growths at a size smaller, we could stop it earlier on. So instead of curing it maybe what we need to do is use machines to catch it much earlier.
是的！對於我們的數碼世界，我們已經有了很多數據和見解，但對於最重要的系統，也就是我們的身體，我們卻沒有足夠的認識。最後，治癒癌症也是一件大事。如果癌症是無法根治的，那麼我們也可以研製新型的核磁共振儀，在腫瘤比現在小得多的時候探測到它們的存在。目前癌症一檢查出來經常就是晚期，主要原因就在於現有的設備只能看到一定大小的腫瘤。如果我們能探測到更小尺寸的腫瘤，我們就可以更早地阻止它。所以說，與其想辦法根治它，或許我們應該做的是利用機器更早地捕捉它。

Many of these ideas you like—wouldn’t they scare most people? Its all very Isaac Asimov.
很多你喜歡的點子會不會嚇到多數人？它們聽起來很有阿西莫夫的風格。

I’ve thought about how to implement this. Speaking for myself, I never want to go to the dentist, I never want to go to the various doctors. So if someone told me to implant something in my body, as a futurist, I’d be down, but as a citizen I would think it is annoying. And maybe scary. So I think it’s something that needs to be done when you’re super young with the guidance of a pediatrician. We could just get in the habit of, once you’re born, when you’re two years old or something, you get this thing implanted and you grow up with it and it becomes part of your life. People are just scared of things that they’re not used to.
我已經想過怎樣實施這些點子了。說到我自己，我從來不喜歡看牙醫，也從來不喜歡看醫生。所以如果有人讓我往身體裏植入一個東西，作爲一個未來主義者，我可能被說服；但作爲一個普通人，我會覺得這樣做很討厭，甚至有些嚇人。所以我認爲這種事情應該在人非常小的時候，在兒科醫生的指導下完成。我們以後可能養成這種習慣，也就是出生後，大約兩歲大的時候，你就會被植入這種東西，然後帶着它長大，它會成爲你人生的一部分。人們只不過是對自己不習慣的東西感到恐懼。（財富中文網）