"Soup's on." "Come get it, y'all." "Do not ride that thing in the house." "But why, Dad?" "Because I said so." "You think that's funny, Lucy?" "Sit." "Eat." "You ride that thing again in the house and I'll turn you off." "Go, go, go." "Police!" "Halt!" "Public order violation of 82-I." "guilty." "Yes!" "Finally hoverboards." "I've been waiting for one since Back to the Future." "And that is exactly what this episode is about." "Sci-fi technologies they've been promising us for years but have not yet materialized." "In this White Rabbit Project..." "There's something you don't see every day." "we're going down the rabbit hole of famous sci-fi promises." "The future is now." "To investigate which one is closest to coming true." "Under the microscope:" "Where are the missiles?" "Jetpacks..." "On your left." "cyborgs..." "Good shot." "and hoverboards." "Still waiting." "As usual, we'll rank our six contenders by testing them all against three criteria." "How close is it to fulfilling the sci-fi promise?" "How much does it cost?" "when can I get one?" "Get ready, you guys" "'Cause first up is actually, "Where's my hoverboard?"" "Let me take you back to 1989, the year that Marty McFly hovered into pop culture with this..." "Hoverboard." "Now fast forward to 2015, when Back to the Future was literally in the past, and this date specifically," "October 21, 2015." "The day that hoverboards were supposed to be available." "Well, that day came and went." "Just gonna stretch a little." "And a ton of companies jumped on board to ride the wave of hype." "This is bull--!" "Some better than others." "Makes you feel ultra-cool." "And the catchphrase, "Where's my hoverboard?"" "became shorthand for a future technology that had been promised but not yet delivered." "Now I will travel like this everywhere." "So, what's the closest we have to a hoverboard today?" "Well, there's this, the Lexus Slide." "Now, at first glance, it looks totally legit, right?" "But... this... is no ordinary skate park." "There's a secret magnetic track hidden just beneath the surface of the concrete and the water, and the Lexus Slide can only travel over that one specific path." "All right, so what else do we have?" "Well, there's the Zapata Air." "Now, unlike the Lexus, they use jet engine thrust systems, so, theoretically, they can fly over anything" "which is one step closer to the sci-fi promise." "There's just one problem." "They're prototypes." "I can't go buy one." "Turns out if I really want a hoverboard, I've only got one option." "I've got to make it myself." "Whenever I build something that doesn't yet exist," "I try not to reinvent the wheel." "Instead, I look to existing technology to see what I can cobble together to make it work." "For this, I've chosen drone technology." "They have high efficiency motors, it's battery powered, it's perfect." "So, the hover board is gonna have eight motors in an X configuration." "And they're going to be coaxial, one right on top of the other." "These 29-inch props rotate at 3,300 RPM." "That's beginning to look like something." "Something dangerous." "I weigh 145 pounds, so I need each motor to put out at least 20 pounds of thrust." "This luggage scale test will tell me if we're in the zone." "There is a minor possibility that it will either A, shatter, or B, become detached from this motor shaft, which means this piece of carbon fiber, will launch at you very, very quickly, so everybody should be below this height." "Here comes the danger." "Okay, here we go." "Looking good." "All right 6.6, we're only at 50 percent thrust." "Eight, ten, twelve, 14, eighteen," "twenty..." "Twenty point three-four pounds." "Excellent." "Twenty point three-four pounds times eight is a little more than 160." "I weigh 145, which leaves me a measly 15 pounds for my batteries and my carbon fiber body." "That's cutting it close, so next I want to make sure I have the optimal motor configuration." "Here we go." "With an airflow test." "Using the flow of smoke, I run a simulation." "And the results aren't what I was hoping for." "According to the simulation, this configuration with the motors, one on top of the other," "is gonna result in upwards of 15 to 20 percent loss of thrust." "So, now comes the part of my build where I take everything that I've been working on, throw it out the window and go to a flat eight configuration." "That way, thrust number 20.3 pounds times eight is exactly the amount of lift I'm gonna have." "Okay, so here is my hoverboard." "It has a carbon fiber body, eight brushless motors." "It's powered by lithium polymer batteries." "It has a safety switch." "In case I happen to step off the board, it'll kill power to all the motors simultaneously." "Inside this protective dome are the smarts of the hoverboard." "There's a radio controlled receiver that gets signals from my transmitter, it passes those on to the flight controller." "The flight controller has an onboard three axis accelerometer." "Ten o'clock." "Along with that sensor data and my input, it controls all eight motors simultaneously" "Let's do this." "to keep the board hovering." "With all that tech, this could be an accident waiting to happen." "Okay, here we go." "So, next step, remote control test flights." "Hoverboard calibration test... number one." "All right, here we go." "Let's try that again." "So, the purpose of flying test calibration flight after test calibration flight is to zero in on the settings for the flight controller." "By changing the gains on the flight controller," "I can get it to fly more stable." "And if it's a hoverboard you're after..." "Yes." "stability is the holy grail." "I think I'm ready." "My hoverboard has been built from scratch, using components that are being pushed to their absolute limit." "It is inherently dangerous." "In fact, it's one of the more dangerous things I've built in my career, which says a lot." "A thousand things have to go right, and if only one thing goes wrong," "I don't fly." "Let's hope a thousand things go right today." "All right, this is hoverboard test number one." "Three, two, one." "Now, the cry for where's my hoverboard, really should be where's my jetpack?" "Because that's been around a lot longer in the sci-fi world than a hoverboard." "Now, take a look at this super-realistic film." "You walk out your front door, you got your jetpack on, you fly over commuter traffic" "and land safely at your destination." "There it is, the dream summed up." "Then in the 1960s, the technology became a reality." "The Rocket Belt." "Hydrogen peroxide, converted into super-heated steam, provided the propulsion." "But these early models had a very limited range and very short flight time." "They were unstable and completely dangerous." "Similar to my upbringing." "The technology gradually improved, culminating in the 1984 L.A. Olympics." "Millions of people thought that the jetpack commute was right around the corner." "But for 20 years or so, technology stalled." "Then in 2010," "Glenn Martin from New Zealand, developed this." "Now, the Martin Jetpack can fly at 46 miles an hour and an altitude of 3,000 feet." "Amongst other uses, it'll be deployed by emergency first responders and it could be a game changer." "It's an awesome personal flying device, but strictly speaking, it's powered by a two-stroke engine, not jets." "And it's not that handy backpack-sized gizmo that sci-fi promised us." "But then, in 2015, this video went viral." "And my search for a futuristic jetpack was over." "This is the JB9, and the pilot is JetPack Aviation's co-founder, David Mayman." "A lot of people thought it was a fake." "They thought he was hooked into a helicopter." "So, I wanted to go out and see it for my own eyes to make sure that this technology was real." "Mayman was a hard man to pin down... wary of letting anyone too close to his prototype." "Finally, he agreed to meet me in a remote spot with his latest model, the JB10." "Is that real?" "Are my eyes deceiving me?" "Oh, man..." "You have completed my geek fantasy." "Yeah, I'm excited." "Try it on." "Come on." "I'm gonna cry a little." " Cool." " Oh, my God." "This is so cool." "Where did you come up with the design?" "Nelson Tyler designed the original rocket belt..." "Okay." "way back in the '60s and '70s." "Right" "So, a lot of the concept in terms of how the thing is put together, goes back to those days." "How does this thing work?" "We got two turbine engines, like jet airliner engines, but shrunk down, obviously." "Where are the missiles?" "And so once you start flying, how does that feel?" "When you take off, the ground just, whoo, disappears below you." "I mean, for the first time I did it off the safety tether, it was freaky." "Now, what happens if you have an engine fail?" "You're gonna go down." "Then what?" "Do you have a parachute?" "We're building a parachute system, but not yet." "So, you're only flying over water at this stage." "At this stage." "Okay, that's smart." "Mayman hopes that the JB10 will fly at over 100 miles per hour, at an altitude of 10,000 feet." "God, this thing is awesome." "How awesome?" "Eleven out of ten." "Ever since I was a kid I wanted a jetpack, and I think everybody should commute to work in one of these." "But, because we're not there yet," "I thought it'd be kind of fun if we raced modern technology with future technology." "May the best technology win." "Cool." "This truck is sick." "A supercharged five liter engine pumps out 700 horse power, and I plan to use it all." "The course is five miles long." "The rules?" "I stick to land." "David sticks to water." "Game on." "I am about to race a man in a jetpack." "This guy is a real world Tony Stark, and I'm gonna race him." "All right, on my count." "You're going down." "In three, two, one, go!" "Oh, damn, he is flying!" "News comes over the walkie." "David's having technical problems." "His pit crew are swapping out a turbine." "That doesn't mean I'm stopping to help." "Just as well." "David's airborne again." "Even now, that jetpack could still beat me." "But unlike lightning, technical gremlins can strike twice." "And I cross the line alone." "That was sick." "But when the dust settles," "I realize this is the first race I've ever been sad to win." "That tiny glimpse of the future was tantalizing and I want more." "Luckily, David invites me back to his headquarters where his engineers quickly iron out the problems" "He hooks on the safety line." "He just started the engines." "Oh, yeah." "That looks so cool, look at that." "It's like standing right next to a jet plane." "That's a sexy thing." "You have created an actual jetpack." "Yeah!" "That is insane." "It's so cool." "You flew." "Is that good?" "Smoking like that's good?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "It's normal." "Okay." "It's cooling down." "Okay." "Jetpack." "I'm convinced." "This is working technology." "I saw it with my own eyes." "That flight around the Statue of Liberty was no trick." "That was 100 percent real." "For half a century, people have been asking," ""Where's my jetpack?"" "I believe that, finally, that day is so close we can almost touch it." "That is a day I'm looking forward to." "I want one of these, as far as the sci-fi promise, that is really close." "I mean, it looks like it flew right out of a sci-fi movie." "But how much did that cost?" "That one is $250,000." "That's like a really fancy car." " Yeah, it's not cheap." " When are we gonna get them?" "You'll probably see these in one to two years." "Check out my first contender." "A sci-fi prediction from the original Star Wars." "In 1977, being able to record a hologram message and then play it back in thin air was the radical vision of the future." ""Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi."" "Princess Leia's famous recorded message held out the promise that one day we'd be able to communicate by hologram in real time." "I wanna see how far we've come so to discover some hologram basics" "I'm starting with a small scale hack." "All I need is a little acrylic, cutting tool, glue and a tablet." "Just a matter of cutting out four sides of a rhombus," "sticking them together and presto!" "And now... once I kill the lights, I'm gonna have a hologram." "This seemingly three-dimensional image is caused by the reflection of the globes on my tablet through the sides of the rhombus." "How cool is that?" "It's a cute start but a long way from that sci-fi promise of real-time holographic communication." "So, I'm heading for the pros at Hologram U.S.A." "Prime mover and shaker is Alki David." "That is fantastic." "What you're seeing now is, in fact, an illusion." "An age-old illusion." "A 200-year-old parlor trick called "Pepper's Ghost."" "Pepper's Ghost was a theatrical creation of scientist John Henry Pepper in 1862." "He reflected light off a concealed actor onto the stage via an angled sheet of glass, making her appear like a ghost." "Modern holograms use film and lasers." "Roll the camera." "A laser light is split into two paths." "One illuminates the object and bounces onto a photographic plate." "The second beam, called a reference beam, is redirected by the mirrors onto the same plate." "Where the illumination and reference beams cross paths, the interfering light waves create a light field which is now captured on film." "Give me five." "So, while it looks like I'm talking to the real Alki..." "This is so weird." "in fact it's his holographic film image, projected through this foil." "Very powerful projectors project an image reflected through an invisible foil and gives you, the audience, the illusion that I'm standing here, but I'm not." "And now there's a tiger." "And-- And now you're actually here." "I'm actually here." "With all this cool tech on hand," "I can't resist the opportunity to become a hologram myself." "Action, Kari." "In fact, several holograms." "While my Kari clones are being made, let's see how this contender scores." "First, how close are we to the sci-fi promise?" "Well, I did have a real-time conversation with Alki's hologram, but we had to be in his studio to do it, so five out of ten." "Second, how much does this technology cost?" "Alki's setup would set you back a cool half million bucks." "Cut." "Perfect." "Third, when can I get one?" "Unless the laws of physics change, never." "You can make images float near a holographic display device but not in thin air." "So, this could be as good as it gets." "Which one's the real me?" "What, is it getting too real for you?" "We're investigating six contenders to see which famous promises from science fiction are closest to coming true." "Which reminds me..." "Where's my hoverboard?" "Back to the Future promised, but despite a proliferation of prototypes, this elusive future tech has yet to hit the street." "Still waiting." "And, given how obsessed I am, I had to build one myself." "Yes." "I've done my remote control calibration tests." "I've run the diagnostics." "Now for the human factor." "Will it be Granty McFly?" "Or Granty McDie?" "All right hoverboard test number one, powering up transmitter." "Powering up flight controller." "Okay." "Power up motors." "Idling up." "All right, this is hoverboard test number one." "Three, two, one." "I'm not sure if the problem is thrust," "or stability, or pilot error." "Okay." "Let's try that again." "This is hoverboard test number two." "Up!" "Up!" "So, I'm not quite getting off the ground, but I feel like I am so close." "This is extremely difficult to try and fly." "Damn it!" "What I think my issue is here is thrust." "Here we go." "We are pushing these motors and batteries and speed controls to their absolute limit." "And the bottom line is if you don't have enough thrust, you're not getting off the ground." "Back to the drawing board." "My next contender comes straight out of Star Trek." "Here, at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, doctors are pioneering a futuristic wound healing technology." "Later, stitches." "Hello, lasers." "This is like real sci-fi in practice." "You see this stuff in the movies." "I wanna see this technology work." "Paging Dr. Belleci, you're parked in the wrong spot again." "He's not gonna make it." "Yeah." "Cancel all my appointments." "Doctor." "Doctor." "Doctor." "Doctor." "Doctor." "And doctor." "Nope." "Oh, perfect, I thought I was the only one that wasn't a doctor." "Now, we have some tissue here." "What is the tissue from?" "This is swine skin." "And we use swine skin 'cause it's very much structurally the same as human skin, so we can predict what might happen in human skin." "And everybody loves bacon." "Mark, wanna start?" "All right." "So, now we've made an incision, as you can see." "And then we have to apply the dye." "We put a dye on the two surfaces." "The dye sticks to those fibers that are in the tissue." "And if you would just dab it into the wound" " How's that?" " That's great." "Perfect." "And now we need to put on our safety glasses for the laser." "We're making sutures with lasers." "So, Matt's gonna place one of his biodegradable waveguides, delivering the light into the wound." "Depending upon the tissue and the tissue depth, it could take as little as 45 seconds to a minute." "And maybe as long as three minutes." "See, I was expecting to see smoke, hear zapping." "Like, you point a laser and just be like, and you fixed the wound." "That was Star Wars." "That's the future." "The waveguide is a light delivery device, like an optic fiber, that can be tailored to the size of the wound." "So, now we think that the wound is sealed, we can turn the laser off." "And what we do at the end is we actually just snip the waveguide off." "It's a biodegradable polymer which will simply dissolve in the body." "That's incredible." "So, would you rather have this on your face or this?" "Neither." "And it's so fast." "I mean, I guess that's really what this is all about, is speeding up that process of closing a wound." "With something like this, you can get it done in seconds." "We're not just talking about mending flesh wounds." "Injuries that have maimed and crippled in the past, could be small potatoes in the future." " I'm gonna lay this on here." " Take this severed nerve." "I just feel like we're missing something." "Wrap it in biomaterial." "Now we are getting ready to use the laser." "Zap it." "We're fixing nerves with lasers." "Watch it regenerate before your eyes." "How about a gut wound?" "No problem." "Vahe is gonna actually make an incision into the colon that would be typical of a knife wound." "It'll be as easy to mend as a bicycle flat." "Except this tire is full of crap." "First, they insert and then inflate a balloon to give the colon section a realistic shape." "There's something you don't see every day." "Patch the hole with stem cell material, cover with dye, and hit it with the laser for 10 minutes." "Laser on." "I've done some weird stuff in my time, but patching a pig's colon is definitely up there." "Okay, it's sealed." "Hey, it farted." "Look at that." "All right, time to go for it." "Test how strong it is by filling it with water until either the patch, or the colon, bursts." "It's game of chicken using a pig's colon." "Everybody's getting nervous." "She's gonna blow!" "If you have this much pressure in your intestine" "She can't take much more, captain!" "You're already dead." "Whoa!" "You win." "This technology feels like it's stepped out of Star Trek." "Like the dermal regenerator, they're using light waves to actually heal wounds." "This is a perfect example of science fiction inspiring real science." "Dr. Belleci, would you please move your car?" "How close to the sci-fi promise are they?" "Well, they are using lasers to close wounds." "Even though it's not instantaneous like the dermal regenerator." "That's cool." "How much does it cost?" "Anything in the medical field is gonna be pretty expensive, so you should probably get insurance." "How soon is it gonna be available?" "They are still waiting for FDA approval, so they're still a few years off." "Speaking of medical procedures, I've been investigating a few of my own." "Lining rocket arm switch is on." "Here's the throttle." "Circuit breaker's in." "Steve Austin, a man barely alive." "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him." "We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man." "I will be that man." "Better than I was before." "Better." "Stronger." "Faster." "Back in 1973, on one of the greatest television shows of all time, they built Steve Austin two new legs, one new arm, and one eye, and now, over 40 years later, I have just one question:" "Where's my six million dollar man, man?" "Where's my cyborg body?" "Can I get some new abs?" "First on my shopping list:" "One bionic arm." "Looks like I've hit the bull's-eye right off the bat with real-life cyborg," "Angel Giuffria." "So, how do you control the arm?" "It's actually easy for me to control." "I have two sensors that sit on my skin, so when I flex and extend those muscles, it allows me to open and close the hand." "It's pretty much one of the most top-of-the-line hands on the market, which is really exciting." "I do like a quick flick up with my arm and it lets me switch to a different grip pattern." "So, how many grip patterns do you have?" "My power grip is the really good one." "Yes." "Which I can use to" "Punch people." "Not just for punching people, I promise." "It would be cool if it shot off." "Yeah." "I can help you with that." "But I have my lateral grip pattern, and then, if I press this button, now I have my open precision, which I can use to pick up a key or a dime or anything like that" "and pick it up." "That is amazing, it's actually better than I could do because I suck at cooking." "You made that look so easy." "A little bit goes into it." "There are five motors and they are housed internally into the palm of the hand." "I see that they're kind of spring-loaded." "Yeah, it's really great to have." "It makes it look more natural, too." "Steve Austin's arm had the power of a bulldozer." "Angel's provides no strength enhancement, but it has the advantage of coming with an array of useful attachments." "As an electrical engineer, as a robotics expert, animatronics expert," "I am so excited to see your hand." "I'm excited that I have my hand." "That's amazing." "And I'm stoked because later Angel's gonna show me how to control it myself." "Then we'll see how it scores." "But first, I need an eye." "Steve Austin's bionic eye gave him an incredible 20-to-1 zoom." "So, what vision-enhancing cyborg tech has science come up with?" "Check out this guy." "Neil Harbisson was born with extreme color blindness." "So, he got doctors to implant an antenna in his brain." "My antenna is a body part, and it allows me to hear colors." "It sends the light frequencies to a chip at the back of my head, and then the chip transposes the colors into sound waves." "I don't feel that I am using technology, I feel that I am technology." "I am a cyborg." "And that's how I feel." "That's one awesome implant, but like Steve Austin's doctors, mine are scouring the planet for tech that can restore lost sight." "Jeroen Perk, from Holland, went blind at age 19." "I lost 80-90 percent of my visual field." "Now a retinal implant prosthesis system has restored enough vision for him to take to the slopes." "A miniature camera in the bridge of his glasses sends visual information to a small computer worn on his hip." "The computer processes the data, and sends it back to the retinal implant, which fires electrical impulses along the optic nerve to the brain, allowing him to perceive patterns of light." "It's" " It's a miracle." "There's no Steve Austin zoom function yet, but that's a genuine bionic eye at 150,000 bucks." "Okay, arm, eye, now legs." "Seeing as I'm currently under the knife," "I've asked Kari to dig me out some new ones to put me in the fast lane." "On your left." "Stop saying it!" " On your left." " Stop saying it!" "On your left." "Come on!" "Hard to believe, but it's been 30 years since the final episode of the Six Million Dollar Man aired." "Now, with all that modern technology has to offer, how close are we to that six million dollar promise?" "On your left." "I guess I'm about to find out." "This strangely-shod demi-bot is Keahi Seymour" "Creator of the aptly-named bionic boots." "Better chase him down!" "Sorry I'm late." "I have, like, normal feet." "So boring." "These are sick!" "Ever since I've been a child," "I just wanna make a human run faster, so I looked towards fast land animals." "Initially, I got the first inspiration from how kangaroos were storing energy in their Achilles tendons." "Then I looked towards a fast bipedal animal, the ostrich so they run up to 45 miles an hour." "So, then I researched the horse, cheetah, and see how I could make a device you'd strap to a human to make them run faster." "Usain Bolt tops out at about 27.4 miles an hour at a fleeting moment in the 100 meter sprint." "I wanna try and keep that sprinting speed for a prolonged period." "Keahi has been evolving his bionic boots for years with the key elements being tough rubber springs to mimic animal Achilles tendons." "with a spring-loaded toe and mountain bike tire for grip." "I'm always trying to hone the weight of the boots down." "This is the current prototype we have here, all fiber glass exoskeleton shell with aircraft-grade aluminum" "My idea for the future is actually trying to add some sort of actuator to give you a boost to each of your stride." "I'm rocking at about, like, 10 to 12 to 15 feet." "I wanna increase it to about a stride length of 25 foot." "That's the same as an ostrich." "I'll be rolling at 45 miles an hour." "That's crazy." "And it's closing in on Steve Austin's 60 miles per hour." "You're planning to take this to market." "Absolutely." "I gotta get everyone to feel the sensation of being bionic." "It's spectacular, when you put the boots on." "Keahi assures me that they're easy to use." "I feel like I wish I was, you know, like 12." "Guess I'll just have to take his word for it." "Right." "Let's talk about the criteria." "They're not available quite yet, but they're getting really close." "I mean, these prototypes are almost ready for market." "The price point on them is gonna be around what a bicycle would cost." "And finally, how close are we to the six million dollar man?" "Well, we're not at 60 miles an hour yet, but we're getting really close." "Bionic boots?" "Check." "Now I just need a helping hand to wrap things up, and luckily," "Angel brought in a spare, so I could get a feel for exactly what it's like to control a cyborg limb." "Let's get you hooked up." "Okay." "So, try to close your hand." "There you go." "And then open." "Like we're twins." "That's amazing." "Why don't you try to flick your wrist up." "All right, now close." "Good job." "Hey!" "I'm number one!" "You just changed grip patterns." "You're pretty good at this." "I hope you know I'm not giving this back." "The future is now!" "Angel's bionic arm retails for $30,000." "So, how does our real-life Steve Austin body parts package score overall?" "Welcome to our personal archery range." "First, how close are we to the sci-fi promise?" "Good shot." "Well, pretty close." "Technology can't yet create a Steve Austin-style superman, but we really could rebuild him." "The total cost of our cyborg package slashes that six million dollar price tag to just $186,000." "And when can I get all this tech?" "Well, the arm and eyes are available right now." "And the bionic boots?" " On your left!" " They're on their way." "So, the future is soon." "Yeah, I hope so." "All right, we've selected six sci-fi promises to see which one is the closest to being realized." "And for my next contender," "I feel like I have the granddaddy of them all." "X-ray specs." "The X-Ray specs were a really cool sci-fi promise." "Imagine you're a 10-year-old boy, you love Superman, you wanna be able to see through brick walls, too." "You could find out what everyone was up to." "But say you're just a little bit older, you're probably less interested in seeing through brick walls, and more interested in seeing through-- Here put these on!" "Like a lady in her underwear." "Super hot." "It's what I wear." "So, why do these state-of-the-art $1.50 spectacles fail to deliver?" "You won't be surprised to learn that there's no actual X-ray involved." "Okay, enough of this." "In fact, the secret ingredient is a feather, pressed between two layers of cardboard." "The feather diffracts the light, so you see two slightly offset images." "Distorted vision, yes." "X-ray?" "No." "Now, there is one technology that gets us closer to the promise of the X-ray specs and that's the backscatter X-rays at the airport." "Less powerful than normal X-rays, they penetrated your clothing about an inch into your body, creating what looked like nude images." "This created a pretty big stink when it was introduced because people did not really appreciate their privates going so public, but it's also not wearable, and it also has a $100,000 price tag." "So, who, I ask, is going to lead us from the opaque past and into the transparent future?" "Well, we might have a breakthrough." "After years of R and D, the Evena company has come out with this." "They're Eyes-On Glasses that look through the skin, down to the veins beneath." "They're for medical use, not a gimmick." "How do these glasses work?" "Okay, so what they do is they use four different spectrum in near infrared." "It's not X-ray glasses per se?" "It's near infrared." "It's safer than X-ray." "But you still can't see underwear?" "Correct, no underwear." "Yeah, that's not really the sci-fi promise." "Okay, so just put these guys on?" "Exactly." "I see" " Whoa, okay." "Yeah, it's a little weird." "Whoa." "That's crazy, my veins are black!" "This is some vampire blood going here." "So, what was the inspiration for creating these glasses?" "One of the founders of the company was a military official, and he saw a lot of combat victims come in without IV access." "Combat victims were the inspiration so they could place IVs properly." " Exactly." " I love that." "Yeah, it's pretty cool." "Very stylish if you're in X-Men, right?" "So, how does this one score?" "This is an amazing wearable technology, but we're looking at the sci-fi promise of X-ray specs." "These infrared medical specs can see veins, but ladies' underwear?" "That's as safe as ever." "They don't deliver on criteria one." "At a competitive $10,000, they'll score better in the cost rankings" "But nobody's seriously trying to invent those pervy peeking specs, so, chances are, you'll never see them." "Now when I first tried this," "I calculated I would have just enough thrust to get off the ground." "Obviously, I was wrong." "So, when I went back to the drawing board," "I doubled the motors." "I doubled the battery capacity." "I added 160 pounds of thrust." "I replaced all the carbon fiber arms with aluminum." "This is not elegant." "It's not efficient." "This is brute force." "And if this fails today, it won't be because of the machine, it'll be because of me." "Remember, this is the White Rabbit Project." "No chickening out." "Okay, here we go." "Yes!" "There's your hoverboard!" "Thank you." "This one's a long road." "It was a lot of nights and weekends working on this, and I did almost give up." "When you're taking off, that is the hardest part because you need to give it enough thrust, just enough to get off the ground, and if I'm not careful with it, it will send me into the ceiling, instantly." "So, that is probably the scariest part." "Beyond that, once I'm in the air and stable, you just have to keep the balance, feel the board." "I spent four weeks making this thing, including all of the research and development, starting from ground zero." "How close is it to the sci-fi promise?" "Did you not see me hovering?" "It cost about $20,000." "Pretty minimal compared to some of the boards in the world, which they won't even release a price." "Thank you very much." "When is it available?" "Well, if you really wanted one," "I could make you one in about a week." "Okay, there's your hoverboard, and I'm still alive." "That looks fun." "Can you come over this weekend?" "I need my lawn mowed." "Yes." "The future is now." "We've looked at six sci-fi predictions." "Fixing nerves with lasers." "Now let's see which one is the closest to being realized using our three criteria:" "How close is it to the sci-fi promise?" "How much does it cost?" "And when can I get one?" "hologram." "Holographic communication is a way off..." "Give me five." "and it was the most expensive of all our contenders." "X-ray specs." "This contender was great for seeing veins." "This is some vampire blood going here." "But underwear stays out of sight for now and the foreseeable future." "It's hot." "On your left." "At four, our cyborg tech body parts undercut the six million dollar man in price." "Can I get some new abs?" "But while they're all awesome, they can't match Steve Austin's fantasy powers." "the jetpack." "I think I'm gonna cry." "This futuristic icon is almost a reality, but you'd have to be Tony Stark to afford one." "That is insane!" "the Dermal Regenerator." "I just feel like we're missing something." "This Star Trek-inspired device was very close to the sci-fi promise." "Live long and laser-suture." "Whoa!" "the hoverboard." "Call us biased, but while Grant's creation is a prototype, it's a board, it hovers, and it's here." "There's your hoverboard." "And that's how our contenders stacked up." "So, what do you think?" "Have we arrived?" "Do we have what we've been wanting?" "No." "I thought by the time I'd be a grown up, I'd be in my flying car." "Look at everything we do have, including the super computer in your pocket." "Did you not see that jetpack?" "It looks like it flew right out of a sci-fi movie." "Yeah, when I get one, I'll feel like the future."