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The Observer

Hendo hoverboard: Where were going we

dont need roads
A gadget dreamed up 1980s film Back to the Future, the first real hoverboard
will glide off the production line in 2015. But Arx Pax, the company behind it,
has much more ambitious plans

The Hendo hoverboard. The first will be delivered in October. Photograph:

Justin Fantl
Stuart Dredge
@stuartdredge
Friday 6 March 2015 04.06 ESTLast modified on Saturday 7 March
201519.12 EST
Its 2015, but we still dont have time-travelling cars. However, another gadget
from the Back to the Future films is within reach: the hoverboard. American
startup Arx Pax raised $510,590 on crowdfunding website Kickstarter in
December for its Hendo hoverboard, with plans to ship the first in October to
11 backers who each pledged $10,000 for one of the first.
The device uses magnetic-levitation technology: four disc-shaped hover
engines induce an opposing magnetic field in a special surface, enabling the
Hendo to hover an inch above the ground. Hundreds more people pledged
between $299 and $949 on Kickstarter for Arx Paxs whitebox developer kit,
which includes a set of hover engines and enough surface to hover on. The
idea is that theyll be able to explore Arx Paxs patented magnetic field
architecture (MFA) technology, and perhaps make their own devices.

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The Hendo hoverboard floats about one inch above the ground using
electromagnets. Photograph: PR
Meanwhile, Arx Pax has its own startling ambitions: using MFA to levitate
buildings from homes to hospitals to help them escape damage from
natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. The hoverboard is a headlinegrabbing calling card for its longer-term social goals. Sometimes the big
breakthroughs are as a result of the naive daring of the outsider. And thats
us, says Greg Henderson, who founded Arx Pax with wife Jill. We
approached this with a social goal in mind: to be able to protect equipment
and structures from earthquakes, floods and rising sea levels. The passion that
drove all this came from the desire to really make a difference in how we build
for Mother Natures bad days.
He boils down MFA as a more efficient way to transmit electromagnetic
energy. Arx Pax decided early on that a hoverboard would be the best way to
prove the technology, and drum up funding for the company. Initially, Arx Pax
relied on the Hendersons savings, then investment from friends and family.
The company chose crowdfunding as its next step rather than seeking money
from corporate investors. There are so many industries and larger companies
that could benefit from this, but the real risk was that we would be put under
their thumb, and the technology might be shelved because it was competition
for what they were doing, he says.
We made a conscious decision to go ahead and put it in everyones hands,
and put it out there as far and wide as possible. This is a new tool for
humanity. We can solve a lot of problems with this technology: its an
obligation to share what were doing with the world. Within Arx Pax, Hendo
Hover has been given a clear brand identity. Henderson says the company
wont be hovering skyscrapers in the immediate future, but suggests smallerscale applications like the ability to flip a switch to levitate computer servers or
even wine racks the August 2014 earthquake in South Napa, California cost

vineyards an estimated $80m as being closer. In the meantime, theres a

hoverboard to finish and ship.
Testing a prototype of the Hendo hoverboard.
The company is planning to present the first 11 purchasers with theirs on 21
October Back to the Future day, after the date made famous in the film
and Henderson says its already fielding interest from skateboarding parks in
installing the necessary surface.
Answering critics will be another task: Henderson concedes there are still
doubters unconvinced by Arx Paxs technical explanations and demo videos:
The greatest opposition comes from folk who dont think weve earned the
right to put this out there, because we arent going through the rigorous peer
review process that the scientific community has.
But the human resistance to change is the real obstacle. The idea that, if
something was a good idea, someone else would already be doing it. If it
werent for people who had the guts to try something new, wed all still be
living in caves! The real enemy is the willful ignorance of the troglodyte.