Magnet Levitation — Slot Racing Car Prototype (1987)

This is footage of a prototype for a road-racing toy that was never manufactured. It was similar in operation to conventional slot car sets, but without the slots, or motors in the cars.

The track was a long ribbon of lithographed rubber with a linear array of magnets inside. The magnets were pulsed in succession to create a "moving" field. The cars were tiny, about three-quarters of an inch long. They consisted of a one-piece, thin, floppy rubber shell surrounding a plastic framework containing very strong magnets. The cars moved forward when placed on the track, driven by the magnetic pulses. Drag friction was not a problem, for the cars were levitated a small distance by the magnets and the car did not actually touch the track.

The manufacturer felt the "rippling" of the car bodies, caused by the magnetic pulses, was unattractive because it resembled maggot locomotion. The manufacturer was also of the opinion that the cars' odd "wheel stubs" were off-putting. The fragility of the device, the waning popularity of road racing sets, and the relatively high cost of a toy based on this design did not warrant manufacture and marketing.

Development was cancelled while a promotional video was already underway. This footage is from that incomplete project.

The production of this video was also quite interesting. The car was photographed with a ceiling-mounted motion controlled camera on a grid of metal rods which were arranged like the guide grid inside an Etch-A-Sketch toy. It had a "snorkel" lens, much like the ones used to photograph miniature spaceship models in the old days of special effects before computer animation became practical. The lens of this camera has extreme depth-of-field.

The toy protype could be operated with great precision, so it was possible to specify camera positions progressively as the car drove around the track, and the camera would track the car after the coordinates were entered into the stepper motor memory.

Usually, motion control cameras of that vintage were used for single-frame photography, but in this case the real-time performance was quite useful. The camera smoothly swoops around the miniature track, keeping the car in frame.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Magnet
• Levitation
• Slot
• Racing
• Car
• Prototype

[newcomer9747]

It is CGI?

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[WorldScott]

This looks soooo much like CGI. It's difficult to imagine that it is not.

Cool vid!

Thanks,

-Scott

[DaveSlaz]

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