HoverBall, a piece of drone-powered sports equipment under construction at the University of Tokyo, has the potential to change the face of sports forever. For the first time, a ball that goes up doesn't have to come down.
If their HoverBall prototype takes flight, researchers at the Rekimoto Lab say it could glide through the air or move around players all on its own. If that reminds you of something, you're probably thinking of the self-aware "golden snitch" seen in the main game of the Harry Potter universe: Quidditch.
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But don't hop on your Nimbus 2000 just yet. The university is still working on a HoverBall design that is durable enough to withstand the rough and tumble of sports, New Scientist says.
"To play with balls, certain physical methods, or 'vocabularies,' such as throwing, hitting, spinning, or kicking have been developed by reflecting the fact that balls obey physical dynamics," the team writes on its website. "While this feature forms the foundation of ball-based sports, we consider it might as well limit the possibility of them."
The plastic, remote-controlled ball contains a 90-millimeter-wide drone embedded in a cage. It has the ability stay in the air for up to five minutes, but can also be grounded for earth-bound action.
Drones made a splash at the 2014 Sochi Olympics as a new technique in sports photography. One of the scientists involved in the HoverBall project, Jun Rekimoto, was also part of a previous effort to levitate objects using sound waves.
HoverBall was presented Mar. 7 at the 2014 Augmented Human Conference in Japan.