Films are always a great source of inspiration when it comes to exciting new inventions. What seemed like impossible touch screen technology in Minority Report is now almost commonplace in multi-touch iPhone screens and ever since Marty McFly jumped onto a Hover Board in Back to the Future II, scientists have been dreaming up ways to make it a reality.
Operating along similar principles to high speed trains, Swedish design company Ekaf have unveiled a prototype magnetic levitation skateboard. The board (which needless to say has been christened the ‘Hover Board’ by the press) can support the weight of a small child.
Of course (and unfortunately) it’s not exactly like the film. Similar to the mag lev trains which inspired the breakthrough, the board is confined to a running track fitted with electro-magnets which repel the corresponding magnets on the underside of the board. However, the developers are currently working on a basketball court sized surface embedded with magnets and envisage similar ‘skate parks’ being developed in cities across the globe.
Luckily for the those of us who never quite got to grips with the standard ‘non-hover’ model, the design is still a prototype for now.
Site: www.ekaf-sweden .com
(Update: Now that we’ve moved onto April 2nd I can of course confirm that Ekaf is ‘fake’ backwards, the first letters of each paragraph spell out F-O-O-L and that unfortunately nobody’s quite got ’round to creating a Back to the Future-style Hover Board – although if you follow the link there is a cool vid of a makeshift version.)
Subscribe for Free: RSS | EMAIL
