Microsoft has uncovered a brilliant concept; it is currently working on a laptop battery system that touts to understand the user's behavior to further improve the laptop's battery life.
A Microsoft research project recommending the new method of lengthening the battery life of laptops has been put together by researchers Ranveer Chandra, Bodhi Priyantha and Anirudh Badam.
A company blog entry describes how the researchers used a variety of existing batteries that work in tandem with an intelligent software to make the batteries last considerably longer.
"[The software-defined battery system] combines several different kinds of batteries, all of which are optimized for different tasks, into the same computer," reads the blog post. "Then, it works with the operating system to figure out whether the user is, say, looking at Word documents or editing video footage, and applies the most efficient battery for that task."
Later this week, researchers are slated to present the project dubbed [pdf] "Software Defined Batteries" at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles.
The blog did say that even though it is still a research project, the Microsoft researchers were able to develop functioning prototypes of the battery concept that are anticipated to be used in consumer products down the road.
To date, the blog points out that battery charging on a laptop is managed by the hardware, not the operating system, making it inefficient.
The group thinks that although lithium-ion is generally beneficial, it cannot meet everyone's wants and needs.
Julia Meinershagen, senior engineer for Microsoft's Surface devices group, is likewise joining the group in this particular exploration.
One use-case scenario the blog mentions is that the system may observe that the person plugs in the device every single day at about 2:45 p.m., then gives a lengthy PowerPoint presentation each day at 3 p.m. The blog explains that the computer has to be able to do speedy charge during that time, so the user makes it throughout the afternoon meeting without running out of battery.
In the meantime, the experts believe that a similar principle may also be applied to cars, smartphones and other battery-powered devices.
