Hendo: the world’s first true hoverboard

Marty McFly-style winches were a science fiction fan’s dream. for some time now, and the innovative duo of Hendo Hover may be the first to make this dream a reality.

About two months ago, husband and wife design team Greg and Jill Henderson launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Hendo Hoverboard, a hovering skateboard they hoped to make available by October 2015. The campaign was a huge success, doubling the original $250,000 goal, and it was named one of TIME magazine’s 25 Best Inventions of 2014.

What is a hando hoverboard?

Hendo

The Hendo Hoverboard is exactly what it sounds like: a gravity-defying skateboard that hovers about an inch off the ground—no wheels needed. This is the world’s first real hoverboard and it’s amazing.

So cool that legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk stopped by to take it on and love it:

Since there is no friction, the ride on a Hendo handboard is smoother than on wheels. It seamlessly integrates with your natural body movements so you have total control, while its many safety precautions ensure the safest experience possible.

How it works?

The underlying technologies of the Hendo Hoverboard are everything that has existed before, but so far no one has been able to align them to produce a hoverboard.

On the Kickstarter page, the company provides a simplified explanation of how it works:

The magic behind the hoverboard lies in its four disc-shaped hover engines. These motors create an opposite magnetic field in the surface substrate below, which provides lift by lifting our board off the ground.

hando hoverboard

To go deeper, the technology depends on Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA), which is Hendo’s term for magnetic levitation.

Magnetic levitation is already being used in the freight industry to suspend, guide and propel high speed trains for faster, quieter and smoother transit. . It works by reducing or eliminating friction between the train’s wheels and the axles and rails. But the Hendo Hoverboard is unique in that it is track independent. It moves freely on a copper-plated surface.

Why copper? Well, as Greg Henderson said live, copper is an inductor — a non-magnetic metal:

When you place a magnet next to such a metal, an electric current begins to flow in it. This current, in turn, causes a magnetic field to develop outward from the metal. If the magnetic field that develops is strong enough, it can lift the magnet. If he’s really strong, he can also levitate any object that happens to be attached to a magnet, including a hoverboard.

What Henderson and his team call «floating motors» are actually electrically charged magnets that create the device’s «primary magnetic field». When positioned over an inductive copper surface, a strong repulsive magnetic field is created, pushing the magnets up and levitating the board. ,

One of the hurdles often encountered in the quest to build a hoverboard is the lack of stability. To solve this problem, the Hendo handboard uses four electromagnets instead of one, which Henderson compares to the difference between trying to balance a unicycle and a car.

Whitebox Development Kit

hando white box

Until the hoverboard is available to everyone (financially and in terms of supply), the company is offering the same technology in a smaller form factor with the so-called Whitebox Developer Kit. It’s designed to be easy to work with — take it apart, study it, and analyze it at will.

It will ship with the following (approximate) specifications:

Dimensions: 10″ x 10″ x 5″ (25cm x 25cm x 12cm)
Custom motor dimensions: 4.5″ diameter x 2″ high (11.5cm x 5cm)
Hang Height: 1/4″ — 1/2″ (1cm — 1.5cm)
Battery life: 10-15 min.
Charging time: 1-2 hours
Weight: 10-12 pounds (4.5 kg)
Payload: ~5 lb (3 kg)

The Whitebox will be significantly more affordable than the hoverboard, as the team wants to get the technology into as many hands as possible.

Here it is in action:

Beyond the hoverboard

The Hendo: The World's First Real Hoverboard Handboard Machine 640x289

The hoverboard itself is an amazing product, but this is just the beginning. The real potential lies on the way forward.

“Hendo Hoverboard is just the first step,” Henderson said. “This proof of concept is the easiest way to demonstrate our new technology in a way that everyone can understand.”