There was a thread about a year ago discussing hoverboard technology and development:
VID - ITS HERE! | TMMAC - The MMA Community Forum
It started off with slow, difficult to control devices and moved towards faster and more maneuverable boards.
So the super drone Omniboard, using high powered RC helicopter motors, was pretty spectacular. It looks like a Green Goblin glider and can actually fly. Flight time is around a minute. It's pretty big and noisy but still awesome. I looked into the details of building one and you could probably do it for $2000-$3000. Dangerous as fuck with those blades.
But the guys who make the water powered Flyboard came up with something that blows everything away; the Flyboard Air. It uses jet turbines, so it is smaller, faster and has a much longer flight time (I think they're quoting 10 minutes). Take a look at this bad boy:
They claim a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet and a top speed of 93mph, which looks credible from the video and the technical description of the board (4 x 250hp turbines + stabilisers). It's been around for about a year now and broke the Guinness World Record for hoverboard flight. The old record was 275.9 meters and the Flyboard Air smashed it with 2,252 meters. They are limited by the amount of fuel they can carry in the backpack and I think I've seen them claim they could do 10 miles on it.
Buying one won't be easy because the technology has been sold to a US explosives detection company. I looked into building one but it is much more complicated than the Omniboard and much more expensive. We're talking thousands for each turbine and developing the stabiliser technology from scratch, where as the Oniboard is effectively a a large drone and an off the shelf controller could be used. The flyboard guys said the stabiliser coding took three months alone.
VID - ITS HERE! | TMMAC - The MMA Community Forum
It started off with slow, difficult to control devices and moved towards faster and more maneuverable boards.
So the super drone Omniboard, using high powered RC helicopter motors, was pretty spectacular. It looks like a Green Goblin glider and can actually fly. Flight time is around a minute. It's pretty big and noisy but still awesome. I looked into the details of building one and you could probably do it for $2000-$3000. Dangerous as fuck with those blades.
But the guys who make the water powered Flyboard came up with something that blows everything away; the Flyboard Air. It uses jet turbines, so it is smaller, faster and has a much longer flight time (I think they're quoting 10 minutes). Take a look at this bad boy:
They claim a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet and a top speed of 93mph, which looks credible from the video and the technical description of the board (4 x 250hp turbines + stabilisers). It's been around for about a year now and broke the Guinness World Record for hoverboard flight. The old record was 275.9 meters and the Flyboard Air smashed it with 2,252 meters. They are limited by the amount of fuel they can carry in the backpack and I think I've seen them claim they could do 10 miles on it.
Buying one won't be easy because the technology has been sold to a US explosives detection company. I looked into building one but it is much more complicated than the Omniboard and much more expensive. We're talking thousands for each turbine and developing the stabiliser technology from scratch, where as the Oniboard is effectively a a large drone and an off the shelf controller could be used. The flyboard guys said the stabiliser coding took three months alone.