Weird Flying Carpet Experiment Makes The Magic Real (Video)

Just to clarify, the current work is about demonstrating a propulsive force 
produced by traveling waves in a thin plastic sheet, not lift as of yet. To 
achieve lift, the sheet has to be untethered to allow it reach faster speeds 
(while still being only a few mm above the ground).
We performed such measurements in two setups – one with the sheet suspended 
using an air table, and the other with the sheet hanging from elastic threads. 
The propulsion only works when the sheet is suspended ~1-2mm above the ground, as expected from theory.

The BBC also did not include the description of the videos, that I had given them:

The first video is demonstrating the propulsion caused by the traveling wave. 
The sheet is supported on a cushion of air from the air table, ~1mm above it, 
and is connected to conductive threads to supply power. When the sheet is off, 
its equilibrium position is near the center of the air 
table, and it does not move significantly. When the sheet is on, in this case 
with a traveling wave propagating to the left, it is propelled in the opposite 
direction (to the right in this case). The video shows the sheet turning on and 
off in several cycles, and it thus moves back and forth. Because the frequency 
of vibration is 100Hz, the actual wave shape can not be seen; rather the sheet 
seems to “shimmer” when on.

In the second video, the vibration is only a few Hz, to allow viewing of the 
actual traveling wave vibration. But frequencies this low are not sufficient to 
propel the sheet. In addition, the sheet is suspended from elastic threads in 
this case (~1cm above the ground, so no propulsion would be observed even at 
higher frequencies). Also, the second video is not displaying properly here, presumably due to skipped frames, so it does not look like a traveling wave. The BBC version is better.

Several other errors in the bbc article: 

It is not really like a hovercraft, which pushes air down to create lift – our device pushes air backwards to propel itself forward.

The sentences “He abandoned what would have been a fashionable project printing electronic circuits with nano-inks for one that seemed to have more in common with 1001 Nights than 21st-Century engineering. Prof James Sturm, who leads Mr Jafferis’ research group, conceded that at times the project seemed foolhardy.” were completely made up by the BBC.

The sheet would actually only need to be 50 feet on each side to carry the weight of a person, not 50 meters.