A 26-Year-Old Built a Green Goblin-Style Flying Skateboard — and Flew It 300 Metres

A 26-year-old from central China has built a flying skateboard inspired by the Green Goblin's glider from the Spider-Man comics, and has been showing it off around the river valleys near his hometown.

Song Xingyu, from Badong County in Hubei Province, spent about two months building the machine, according to IBTimes UK, which reported the project on 20 October. CGTN Europe published footage of one of the flights.

From fire to electric

Song's first attempt used jet propulsion. That prototype caught fire during testing and damaged his equipment, IBTimes reported.

Rather than give up, he used artificial intelligence to analyse what had gone wrong and redesigned the board around electric power. The version that flew relies on 10 propulsion units driven by brushless electric motors, which lift the rider straight up.

Brushless motors are the same kind that power consumer drones. They are light, efficient and easy to control electronically, which makes them a natural fit for a machine that has to be balanced constantly in the air.

Watch the flight

How it flies

Staying upright on a flying board depends heavily on the rider, because every shift of weight changes how the machine behaves. To help with that, Song built an AI-assisted monitoring system that runs on mobile phones, assessing flight conditions and guiding his body position, according to the report.

He reportedly practised for more than 10 days in a test area before taking the board further afield. During China's national holiday in early October he gave demonstrations around Badong, including near the Yangtze River and the Baren River scenic area.

On 6 October, the board flew more than 300 metres over about two minutes, according to people familiar with the demonstration cited by IBTimes. Those figures have not been independently measured.

Not a product, yet

The board is an experimental personal aircraft, not something anyone can buy. Questions about its reliability and safety remain open, and the report did not give its weight, top speed, battery life or what happens if a motor fails in mid-air.

Song's machine joins a short list of real-world attempts at comic-book flight. The best known is French inventor Franky Zapata's jet-powered Flyboard Air, which carried him across the English Channel in 2019.

What sets Song's project apart is its scale: a solo builder, a two-month timeline and off-the-shelf electric drone technology, rather than a funded engineering company.

What to watch

• Whether Song publishes more detail on the design, including its weight, battery and safety systems.
• Whether aviation authorities comment on low-altitude flights of this kind in public scenic areas.
• Whether the AI-assisted balance system he describes can be adapted for other personal flying devices.

Cover photo: the Yangtze River at Badong, Hubei, by Sharon Nardo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Video: CGTN Europe on Instagram.