Contactless charging systems

The start-up Blue Inductive develops contactless charging systems for electric cars and mobile robots. This year the fledgling company won first place in the business plan competition “CyberOne Hightech Award Baden-Württemberg” in the Industrial Technologies category. The top honor includes a 10 thousand euro prize. The University of Freiburg’s Center for Technology Transfer (ZFT) and the Founders Office that is based there support the firm that originated from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in April 2016. Just a short time later, in February 2017, the company went on to win the “Freiburg Innovation Award (Freiburger Innovationspreis).”

Blue Inductive builds systems that can charge batteries wirelessly. For example, the technology allows electrically powered vehicles to roll down charging lanes on the autobahn while replenishing their batteries at the same time. It also has the potential in future to make it possible for a large number of vehicle batteries to access the power grid simultaneously.

Currently, however, the start-up is concentrating primarily on serving mobile, autonomous industrial robots such as forklifts and assembly platforms. Essentially, Blue Inductive’s etaLINK-Technology does the same thing that induction stoves and cordless electric toothbrush and wireless smartphone chargers do. It uses a magnetic field to transmit electricity without contact – however, in the case of etaLINK the transmitter and receiver can be as far as 20 centimeters away from each other. The first product will go into series manufacture at the start of 2018.

Blue Inductive Website

Article about Blue Inductive in the University of Freiburg’s online magazine

Founders Office of the University of Freiburg