Hasta La Gadget!

There have been many attempts to recreate the design of the Hoverboards from Back to the Future II, but none of them have been functional. Now, there’s a project which just kicked off with hopes of creating an actual, working Hoverboard by the Summer of 2015 – the same time period that Marty visits in the movie.

With the goal of creating the world’s first production Hoverboard, Robert Haleluk of Haltek Industries has embarked on an Open Source, crowdfunding project.

Assuming it can actually be produced, the real world Hoverboard won’t look quite like the ones in the movies, in order to accomodate a propulsion system. According to project leader Robert Haleluk, the Hoverboard will be powered by omni-directional tubeaxial blowers – similar to the ones we saw in the Aerofex Hover Bike.

The boards would be constructed from a honeycomb carbon fiber to keep weight to a minimum. In terms of power source, Haleluk is looking at two promising new lightweight battery technologies – a Lithium-Air battery in development by IBM with the goal of powering a car for up to 500 miles on a single charge or a unique energy device being researched by Stanford which can store power in a sheet of paper with special ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. Of course, neither of these technologies is in production yet, so that certainly creates a risk factor for the Hoverboard project. Current off-the-shelf battery technologies would likely be insufficient to lift a passenger for any meaningful period of time.

Should the Hoverboard project come to fruition, the boards would interface with a companion smartphone app, which would provide the ability to lock and unlock the board, turn it on, and run diagnostics among other things.

In order to fund the development of the Hoverboard, Haleluk has set up an Indiegogo campaign with a funding goal of $1 million (USD). These funds will be used for research, development and production of the first Hoverboards. While a bid of $10,000 or more is required if you want to end up with an actual Hoverboard, lower pledges will be used to further research and development efforts.

Naturally, a project like this is fraught with risks for investors, and there’s a good chance that the end result will be less than stellar. But for those of us who have dreamed of seeing the futuristic vision of floating skateboards come to fruition during our lifetimes, it could be pretty exciting if it actually works out – and we’ll never know if they don’t try.

A lot of the discussion going on at during Ford‘s Trends conference today has been amount smart devices and how they can all integrate and communicate with one another. During a panel discussion, Ford’s John Viera and Andrew Hoffman of the University of Michigan discussed what the future might bring as far as smart devices

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We’ve seen how robotic quadcopters can be programmed to act and complete tasks together. These single propeller vehicles called Distributed Flight Array take that concept to the extreme. On its own, a single one of its aircrafts can barely take off and its flight is unstable. But when multiple modules connect, they become stable, can retain their formation on their own and even resist external forces.

The Distributed Flight Array was conceived by Raffaello D’Andrea and Raymong Oung of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control. Each vehicle has its own power source, motor, computer and sensors. They also have tiny wheels that let them scurry on the ground. They attach to each other using magnets, which are apparently stable enough to keep them together in normal flight.

Will these drones replace the collegiate bands that play at football halftime shows? Will they lead to the creation of super robots? Will they lead to the creation of real-life platforming games? Only time will tell.

[ETH Zurich via Damn Geeky]

How’d you like to be able to fly over the traffic while riding your bike to work? This flying bike could be just the ticket. This remote-controlled bike actually left the ground for about five minutes. But not with a human onboard. A styrofoam dummy was used instead because it still needs more powerful propellers to carry a real passenger.

The helicopter bike comes from a teamup of three Czech companies. It has four large, battery-powered propellers mounted inside two cages, and weighs a total of 209lbs. It may not do much more than lift off and hover a few feet off the ground, but as they improve things it will get better. Imagine a future full of flying bikes. Of course, if they looked like this, they’d have to fly all of the time, because this thing is too wide and long for the road. It’s also ridiculously loud. Yeah it isn’t very practical. It’s more a proof of concept. But it’s still pretty fun to watch it in flight…

Still, if they can make the engine stronger and have the pilot sitting back more, it could be an economical way to put flying vehicles in the sky.

[via Gizmodo via OhGizmo!]

Hand-cranked emergency chargers are nothing new, but the folks behind Voltmaker managed to come up with something novel based on the same concept. Instead of having to turn the crank laboriously, you’ll only have to hold the gadget and spin it round and round to generate energy.

In effect, you’ll be spinning the part of the charger that’s usually supposed to be turned manually.

Spinning should cause less strain since it’s a more passive action. Spinning the Voltmaker for two minutes will give you enough juice to make a quick emergency call. If you want to fully charge up the Voltmaker 2,000-mAh battery, then you’ll need to spin the device for two to three hours. So really, we just recommend using this nifty gadget during emergencies only – unless you don’t mind looking like a fool spinning this thing around for three hours.

The Voltmaker is currently up for funding on Indiegogo, where a minimum pledge of $69(USD) will get you one of your very own if you’re one of the first 3,000 early bird backers.

[via C|NET]