These retroreflectors form a harmless tube of light around the more powerful, flesh-singeing laser beam, surrounding it like a forcefield. Unlike regular flat mirrors, which bounce light away at the same angle it hits them, retroreflectors send light back on the path whence it came-"exactly the kind of reflectors you have on bikes and road signs," Iyer says. They mounted retroreflectors, basically three-sided cube-corners with mirrored inner surfaces, around the photovoltaic cell. More lasers, but lower-power, nowhere near enough to break eyes or burn skin. So the question is, how do you detect a human being in the beam's path and shut it down, shut them all down, before you're blinded by the light? A near-IR laser capable of delivering the 4.3 watts per square centimeter that could make the math work would be both invisible and able to damage a human eye in less than 10 microseconds. They wanted to be able to deliver roughly 1 watt of power to a receiver just about the size of your pinky fingernail, efficiently enough to charge a device.
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