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Hoverboards In The Film Back To The Future

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Hoverboards In the movie Back to the Future Part II, (1989), the main character, Marty McFly, rides on a hoverboard in the year 2015. Now that the year that was considered the future in the movie has come and gone, what progress has happened in the field of hoverboards? The answer is quite a bit, although all of the modern versions fall short of the urban sports equipment featured in the film. Here are the top five contenders for the title of hoverboard. • Self-balancing smart scooter, the first product to be mass produced with the claim of being a hoverboard, is in fact not much more than a Segway without the handle. This ‘hoverboard’ does not actually hover but runs on two wheels, utilizing a self-balancing gyroscopic control system. A number of brand names are competing for the lucrative market, despite having a bad reputation of starting on fire. • …show more content…

Operating with an electromagnetic system this product actually hovers, but needs to be operated on a conductive surface. Tony Hawk, the famous skateboarder endorses this hoverboard and is said to have been directly involved in giving feedback to improve the second version. With its limitations it is more likely that the Arx Pax hover engine will find other applications outside of recreational use (Allain, 2015). • Lexus, the car manufacturer has successfully created a hoverboard to be featured in an advertisement, but does not intend to mass produce them. The board operates on a system of superconductors cooled by liquid nitrogen, known as flux pinning. This process requires a track of magnets and has no real world functionality (Allain, 2015). • Omni, moves us away from future replacements for skateboards and into the realm of flying platforms, Omni’s prototype is essentially a platform on a quadcopter drone. It flies, you stand on it and it looks fun but, it would not be practical in an urban environment (Allain,

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