Holy crap, they did it! The engineers at Hendo just released this video showing a real-world Back to the Future style hoverboard! And it actually works! And they are Kickstarting it! And yes, I'm VERY EXCITED, which is why I'm putting exclamation marks everywhere!


From the company:

So where does the HENDO hoverboard stand today? Well, about 1 inch off the ground. As you can see from the video above, the prototype is real and it works! But to see it hover in person, and better yet, to defy gravity by riding it, is something you need to experience as well. With the support of the Kickstarter community, we all can. We need your help to put the finishing touches on the Hendo Hoverboard, to help us produce them, and to create places to ride them.

They claim this is their 18th prototype, so things to be pretty advanced. As you can see in the video, it can supports the weight of one human. The hoverboard doesn't float over any surface, however. It requires a metal ground to work its magnetic magic, but who cares.


They also want to build special hoverboard parks for it, optimized for the hoverboard capabilities.

They are also releasing a development kit called Whitebox+, a floating device that can be controlled through your iPhone or Android phone, giving you "12-15 minutes of hover with a charge time of about 2 hours."


At this point this seems to be the device's weakest point: Battery life (other than the requirement for a metal surface, of course.) These things consumes power like crazy and batteries can't really keep up with it. But it's a start. And it works. And it's a freaking floating hoverboard and I don't care about the buts. Just give it to me (or give the $10,000 that each of the boards cost (2 of the 10 available prototype units are still available.)