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Functioning Hoverboard Unveiled (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, a company called Arx Pax set up a Kickstarter campaign to develop a functioning hoverboard. Now, the company has demonstrated an updated version of the device, which is fully capable of hovering over a surface made out of conductive metal (video on YouTube). CEO Greg Henderson said, "The hover engine creates a primary magnetic field which is then put over a candidate surface like aluminum or copper. The hover engine then creates swirls of electricity and those create a secondary magnetic field, which propels the firsts." The device is expensive; Arx Pax is delivering a handful of units to Kickstarter backers who contributed $10,000. It's out of the reach of typical consumers, but it does seem to work. Plus, the company is sharing their magnetic field technology with teams taking part in the competition to build pods for a prototype of Elon Musk's Hyperloop vacuum tube transportation system.
We've been doing maglev for quite a while now, though few people tried to ride them like a skateboard before. I still haven't seen anything they've done new other than the hype. Now when they don't need a special surface to function, then they can call it a hoverboard.
I'm not sure how to interpret "swirls of electricity", either in terms of particles or in terms of field theory...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This can't possibly be the first, second, or even tenth time we've heard about a maglev hoverboard...
This board will not win me chicks. It will not help me find an almanac from the future. It will not make me Marty McFly.
No sale.
Lexus says; 'Your shit sucks!'
This is a hoverboard. it might not have a very long run time, but it's decades ahead of your Kickstarter ripoff.
If it's generating enough magnetic force to lift a person, it seems like the induced currents must be pretty high. Wonder how hot it gets the substrate, especially if you hover in one place for a bit?
Perhaps you could flip it over and use it as a portable four-element induction stovetop...
I was doing superconductor levitation back in the 1980's, as a kids's science fair project. Now, at the time, I shouldn't afford enough materials to stand on, but this is exactly the same thing.
Lots of techno-babble in TFS & TFA.
For those who haven't seen it in action, random youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Even he must realize how full of shit he is. Here are a couple of videos exposing how ridiculously limited the "technology" is juxtaposed with the CEO's dishonest claims:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEBPQO4Vz1I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMZ2cyNxPwg
Now when they don't need a special surface to function, then they can call it a hoverboard.
That's likely to be a while off. Technically a strong enough magnetic field will work but it needs to be a few orders of magnitude higher than what you need for a Lenz' law effect like this. In a high enough magnetic field you can turn any atom into a tiny magnet which will repel the field but the field strength needs to be several tens of Tesla. Still if you can achieve that you can have some fun.
You invented maglev again?
Maybe you could try to patent it in Australia...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Didn't Lexus already do this
This is just an updated scam of their original scam.
Nobody does any fact checking anymore. Stop just spewing out press releases you fucking dipshits.
Big deal. Quantum levitation technology has been around for ages. How many times do we have to hear this "news"?
Stop pandering to the BTTF crowd. Your four days late anyway.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqmdv5iyIOY
We've been doing maglev for quite a while now, though few people tried to ride them like a skateboard before.
No kidding.
The electrical demos in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry had a demonstrator in the late '50s. It was a half-transformer-like device about the size of a small outside unit for a whole-house air conditioner - a cylinder about 3 feet across and three feet high.
It generated a large, repulsive, "elevator field" in the center - over the bulk of the upper surface, and a slightly inward-directed "fence field" around the perimiter, to keep whatever it was floating centered.
What they usually floated was a metal (copper?) disk about 3 feet across, which floated maybe 6 inches above the device. They could angle the fence field slightly and make the disk spin slowly. The guy demonstrating it also removed the device by holding a second, slightly larger, disk just below it and edging it into the field from the side. When this was moved into the fence field it disrupted it at that spot, so the remaining fields convenient spit the disk onto this "hot tray.
And hot tray it was. The disk got hot from the eddy currents. The demonstrator said they had considered using this as a stovetop (anticipating induction cooktops, but with levitation) but it hadn't worked out.
Came back a decade later and they were still using it - but the sides of the disk had gotten folded upward about 30 degrees and somewhat randomly, turning it into an artsy-looking bowl. Seems somebody had left it floating long enough for the metal to soften, and the fence fields had pushed it up.
Miniaturizing the elevator-field portion of this, probably raising the frequency, and turning it upside down, with field-shape tweaks to keep it level, would produce an over-a-conductive-plate hoverboard. Tweak the fence fields into a couple linear motors along the edge to provide propulsion and steering. (You might even be able to set up the fields so you accelerate, brake, and steer by tilting, making local effects stronger on particular regions of the edge by bringing the pole pieces closer to the conductive surface.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Christmas rollerblade hovertrax are cool - hovertraxing
When it works on *any* surface. Then you will have a hover board.
If you use metal as surface (probably somehow magnetized), couldn't you just hover it with magnets? I mean, what's the big deal here?
It's a maglev board...not a hoverboard. People are so desperate to see this concept come to fruition that they are willing to relax the original definition...lol. Pathetic. Sorry humans...try again.