Those shoes from Back to the Future 2 with lights and USB charging port were cool, but more cool in the way a scorpion jacket from Drive is cool than an actual new product. A working hoverboard has always been the holy grail of science’s ability to replicate technology from sci-fi movies (at least, since we found out the three-boob girl was a fake), and after countless tries and a series of hoaxes, it seems we finally have the real thing, sort of. Using the magic of magnets (HOW DO THEY WORK?!), engineers at Hendo (aka Greg and Jill Henderson) have created a board that can currently support the weight of an adult, hovering about an inch off the ground, provided that ground is made of metal. You can see it in the above video at about 1:10, after the obnoxious indie rock and whispering kid intro.
From the Kickstarter:
The magic behind the hoverboard lies in its four disc-shaped hover engines. These create a special magnetic field which literally pushes against itself, generating the lift which levitates our board off the ground.
So where does the HENDO hoverboard stand today? Well, about 1 inch off the ground. As you can see from the video above, the prototype is real and it works! But to see it hover in person, and better yet, to defy gravity by riding it, is something you need to experience as well.
With the support of the Kickstarter community, we all can. We need your help to put the finishing touches on the Hendo Hoverboard, to help us produce them, and to create places to ride them.
They’ve put the project up on Kickstarter in the hopes of building more (currently they’ve built 10 prototypes), and eventually creating hoverboard parks, or maybe even applying the technology to forms of transportation. A proof of concept, they call it, adding, “the wheel may finally have some competition.”
That seems a little premature at this stage, but we can at least hope for a world where there exists a first date much cooler than rock climbing.
[hat tip: Sploid]