Trawling YouTube at 04:30 as you do when you can't sleep, I come across the exploits of one Hunter Kowald and his SkySurfer. I figure the guy from Canada has done well, tho' a further search reveals that the (naturalised, I think) Canadian who invented the hoverboard as we know it is still buzzing around on his OMNI aircraft.
The layout of each is almost identical too, although the SkySurfer is invariably blurred in every moving picture that you see. A benefit of building PAVs like these however is that you get to recognise its various parts. In both cases the rider is stood astride an extensive battery-pack, whilst the motors are mounted inverted on one of eight arms. The speed controllers in the case of the machine above appear to be mounted in the space above the motors, atop the end of each arm.
It is hard to know where these vehicles are going, besides the lucrative entertainment they currently provide; on the other hand you could have said that of the early days of the aeroplane. In each case I prefer the safety and smaller foot-print of a flying phone box, but then I would, wouldn't I?
Telling too is the fact that the inventor of the jet-powered hoverboard in the form of Franky Zapata has supplemented development with a jet-powered cart for those who feel that the air id not, after all, the safest place to be surfing. Horses for courses, as ever?
Meanwhile today is allocated to getting the uppermost drone flying independently of the remainder of the vehicle, in order to move things along step-by-step: you have to walk before you can fly.
