Every consumer knows the frustration of not knowing whether a household battery is fully charged or empty. It is even more problematic in industry where battery technology is essential for electric vehicles, renewable energy storage, consumer electronics and many other developing areas.

Battery researcher Daniel Steingart, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and his team have developed a technology for using sound waves to determine the health and charge level of batteries. Three postdoctoral researchers from Steingart’s lab, Shaurjo Biswas, Andrew Hsieh, and Barry Van Tassell, formed the company Feasible to expand the project, which arose from research funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

Feasible has already won a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation, and was selected to participate in the Cyclotron Road incubator, which is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the nonprofit organization Activation Energy. “I am amazed by how much excitement and interest we’ve received from industry since spinning out a year and a half ago,” Hsieh said. “There are a lot of companies that need more reliable battery technology and are interested in what we are doing.”