If you are a student from technology background or if you are from any of the IITs than its a very proud moment for you. We all know who Elon Musk is and his achievements. And now a group of students from India got shortlisted by Elon Musk himself.
Heart of the Matter.
A team of engineering students from IIT Madras by the name Avishkar Hyperloop have been shortlisted for the final round of SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition 2019. The competition is to be held in Los Angeles, California in July 2019. The IIT Madras team After clearing the preliminary round in its first attempt last year defeated 20 other finalists in the competition.
The Team.
Avishkar Hyperloop is comprised of a group of enterprising engineers, designers and business think tanks who work together at the Centre For Innovation (CFI) – a student innovation lab at IIT Madras – with the goal of designing and developing a new mode of transport, the Hyperloop.
The team contains 25 students, They are the only one from Asia who qualified in the final round. They will present their POD design to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
The Model.
The model that made Abhiskar hyperloop the only team to get selected was indeed a great one. They built a prototype Hyperloop pod that would take just 25 minutes to travel from Chennai to Bengaluru. Hyperloop involves a sealed tube or system of tubes that allow a pod to travel without air resistance or friction. It transports people or freight objects at high speeds. Avishkar Hyperloop, founded and headed by Suyash Singh, claims their pod is likely to achieve 400 to 450 km/h during the finals to be held in July.
They came up with the design after initially working on a model that ran on levitation and linear-induction motors (a type of contactless motor), finally deciding on going with one that runs on four wheels.
What is Hyperloop?
The concept of Hyperloop has the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX floated the concept of Hyperloop.
Hyperloop ideally is a concept wherein a pod travels in a vacuum tube and there is magnetic levitation, and no mechanical friction. On paper, a vehicle can travel up to 1,200 kilometers per hour. Elon Musk released a white paper on this some years ago. The competition gives a one-mile-long vacuum tube and the whole point is to achieve maximum speed in that distance.
The competition.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX runs the Hyperloop Pod Competition to design and build high-speed Hyperloop pods. It is open to student and non-student teams from across the world. The competition aims to test a subscale prototype transport vehicle. The competition itself is sponsored by SpaceX to create awareness and bring the best minds in the world together to work on the concept.
SpaceX had announced the competition in 2015; three editions have been run so far – in January and August 2017 and July 2018. WARR Hyperloop, from the Technical University of Munich, won the competition in August 2017. They clocked 323 km per hour, and again in July 2018 with a speed of 467 km per hour.
Abhiskar Hyperloop was among the 47 teams that were selected out of 1200 teams in the preliminary round. “The preliminary round is when you give an overview for your design and the final round takes care of detailing on how foolproof your pod is,” said Pranit Mehta, one of Avishkar Hyperloop’s team members, and a B.Tech student from IIT-M. The IIT-M student team will be facing some of the best teams across the world. Which include those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Purdue University, Technical University of Munich, University of Washington, Queen’s University, and others.
Conclusion.
Abhiskar hyperloop becomes the only Asian team to get selected. The competition organized by SpaceX is one of a kind which is aiming to achieve super-speed through Hyperloop. Who knows within a few years we would be able to travel from Mumbai to Goa within minutes. And that’s possible only with the development of hyperloop technology.
