(dramatic music)

Hey, guys, I'm Brent Rose, writer and fleshy projectile.

Today we're talking about hover boards.

No, not these fake-ass bull (beeps) no-hovering

fire bursting wheel having wheelie boards.

We're talking about honest to goodness hovering

hover boards.

So we're here at Arx Pax in Los Gatos, California.

We're gonna check out the brand new Hendo hover board two.

My name is Shauna, I'm one of the engineers here

at Arx Pax.

We do magnetic field architecture.

This is the original hover board that we built

back in October of 2014.

[Brent] This is like the board that Tony Hawk rode.

[Shauna] This is the board.

Tony Hawk came in, took it on the ramp.

You want to take it for a spin?

[Brent] I do.

[Shauna] The only person who hasn't worn a helmet

is Tony Hawk.

Yeah, I am not Tony Hawk.

(beeps)

(whirs)

Oh, this is so cool.

Oh, yeah.

I'm hovering, mom.

Can I push off of you?

And what is the remote control doing?

Kill switch, in case you go flying off.

Got it, okay.

(whoops)

That's the original.

As you hear, it's a little loud.

That was one of the things we strived to improve

at our 2.0.

Obviously what we're standing on here

is not your standard concrete street.

We're on copper, yeah?

Yes, we are standing on copper.

There's a magnetic field that's generated in the engine.

It's a dynamic magnetic field, which means it's changing,

and when you put that in proximity with an electrically

conductive material, it creates an electric circuit.

And that electric circuit in turn creates a secondary

magnetic field, and those two propel each other.

And that's what creates the lift.

Really heavy.

It is heavy, it's very conductive.

So this is the 2.0.

Yes, as you can see, it's definitely a different

form factor than the original board.

We had some input from Tony Hawk, actually,

about staying with the skateboard deck,

the classic look that people are kind of familiar

and comfortable with.

Underneath here we got our battery pack,

much larger and more energy dense

so we have longer run time.

Four engines, that's the same,

but they're slightly different configurations.

So they're a little bit more powerful,

you get a little bit more lift from them.

A little bit more efficient as well.

[Brent] Cool.

This one you can just push the button

and it lifts up all by itself.

And is it sort of more maneuverable at this point.

Yes, we've got these skateboard tracks,

and they're on either end.

As you rock your weight back and forth on this deck,

these engines are gonna move,

and they're gonna tilt a little bit.

So it allows you to get a little bit of input.

So I can just basically shred the (mumbles).

You can try.

It's not gonna shred itself.

Oh, yeah, it's way quieter.

All right.

Oh, yeah.

I can't really steer or control myself,

but definitely more stable than the original one.

(upbeat music)

Oh, yeah, this is so fun.

Yeah, hands work pretty well for steering,

but I feel like we could come up with something better.

(loud whirs)

It's not really doing much.

There we go.

How about we add some close lube control to this problem.

This is our Whitebox+, it's sort of a generic embodiment

of our technology.

Four engines in the bottom,

and there's a micro controller inside.

So we're actually re-directing the magnetic fields.

The engine's actually pivoting in those places.

Yeah, the engines are actually actuating.

So that magnetic field orientation to the surface here

is changing.

Is that something that maybe you guys were thinking about

for the Hendo 3.0?

Absolutely, we can take this up to something that's

hover board size, something that's more industrial.

Hyper loop pod perhaps?

Perhaps, we'll see.

Interesting.

Oh, it's so cute.

Feels springy, not pushing too hard.

Want to try?

Yeah.

Small touches.

Small touches.

Yeah, this actually feels a lot like just flying like a

phantom type drone.

Yeah, good boy.

So this is just a single engine,

same as the ones in the Whitebox.

And this is just to allow you to get a sense of

what that one engine's actually doing.

Oh, yeah, wow.

It probably looks like I'm muscling it right now

with my hand,

but it's actually just the rotation of my wrist.

It's very ouija board-ish.

Can you use these things for like contact dead roboticists?

You know, we should try that.

Some people actually bought these on Kickstarter.

Yep, yep.

Some very lucky kid out there's like building their own

copper skate park in their backyard right now.

So what did we learn here today?

Well, first of all, hover boards are awesome.

Yeah, I couldn't carve like I would

if I were on a snowboard,

but we could already see how that sort of thing's possible

just by tilting the little engine.

And that small adjustment was able to provide more control

and more power than that stupid leaf blower,

which was an abject failure.

And that brings up an interesting point.

Most of the hyper loop designs we've seen so far

require forced air moving a pod through a tunnel.

According to Greg Henderson, Arx Pax's CEO,

pound for pound their magnetic system requires

just one quarter the amount of power

as a fan-based system for propulsion.

If you're looking at a system as big as a hyper loop,

that would be a huge amount of savings,

and it's definitely something that should be investigated.

What do you think of all this technology?

Let us know in the comments below.

Subscribe to Wired if you haven't already.

With all that being said

there's really only one thing left to do.

(upbeat music)