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'Back To The Future'-Style Hoverboard Being Developed

By Edward Cardenas

SOUTHFIELD (CBS DETROIT) - A California-based company wants to go "Back to the Future" and create a hoverboard.

Ever since Marty McFly cruised across the big screen in "Back to the Future II" on the hoverboard - which is similar to a skateboard except that it hovers, instead of rolls, over the ground - has been a product on sci-fi fans have hoped would come to reality.

Now California-based Hendo Hover has started a Kickstarter campaign to bring this product to market.

In a video posted on the Hendo Hover page, company founders Craig and Jill Henderson founders of Hendo showed a prototype hoverboard floating over a half-pipe. They describe the technology they developed is "scalable"  and could be applied to other products.

"The Hendo hoverboard is just the first step. It is a proof of concept," said Craig Henderson. "The wheel may finally have some competition."

The company stated that the hoverboard - which actually "floats" about one-inch over the ground - is the company's 18th prototype and uses four disc-shaped hover engines which create a magnetic field "which literally pushes against itself" and generate lift that levitates the board off the ground.

The board is intended to self-propelled, and the surface below the hover board needs to be a non-ferromagnetic, metallic, surface. According to Slate, the Hoverboard will not operate over water or concrete.

On their page, the Hendersons see the technology being used on planes, trains and automobiles.

Contributors to the campaign can receive a sticker and magnet for a $10 contribution; those who make a $299 contribution will receive a developer kit with a Hendo hover engine;  and for $10,000 donors can get their own Hoverboard.

The Hendersons have a goal of $250,000, and as of Tuesday afternoon, the campaign has raised $98,000.

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