In Back to the Future II, they had the prediction for hoverboards to make an appearance in 2015. They weren’t completely wrong, just one small fact off, the boards don’t defy gravity!  These new hoverboards have taken the media by storm.  Some may know these boards by a few different names, including: “hoverboard segways” or “self-balancing scooter”.  These boards don’t float, yet. For now they roll on two wheels, in every color and usually have some sort of lights on them.  They are more similar to a segway, compared to that of a floating type of transportation.  In fact, if you were to take the handles off of a segway, you would pretty much have a hoverboard.

Unlike segways, these boards have a motor hooked up to each wheel, to help improve control and balance for each individual foot.  Since they don’t have anything to balance on above your feet, these motors help to allow to move left and right as you please.

Some have said that 2015 is the “year of the hoverboard”.  CNN named the IO Hawk-branded hoverboard to be one of the coolest pieces of technology at the Consumer Electronic show in Las Vegas.  Since then, the boards have been made by multiple other companies and thrived in the market.  In the media, these boards have made it onto award show stages, talk shows, and countless popular vine accounts.  These are just a few of the forms of media that these boards have dominated so far.

In the future, these boards could be improved by making them anti-gravitational and modifying the shape to be a bit more aerodynamic.  Right now, they are more for recreational use than anything else and it doesn’t appear that they will become a standard form of transportation any time soon.