A team of student engineers from Avishkar Hyperloop and the Centre for Innovation (CFI) at IIT-Madras have developed an autonomous Hyperloop that which can cover 1,200 km in one hour and is as reliable as rail, fast as an aircraft, and economically feasible as road transport.
The team is the only Asian contender amongst the top 21 finalists out of the over 1,600 designs in the fourth edition of SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod competition. The team’s aim is to introduce the Hyperloop from Chennai to Bengaluru, to cover the 330-km distance in half hour.
Technical seminar
At a technical seminar on Hyperloop hosted by SAE India (Society of Automobile Engineers India) in collaboration with Atria Institute of Technology, Perepu Sai Madhav, a vehicle dynamics engineer on the Avishkar Hyperloop project at IIT-Madras, said the vision of the team is to develop technologies for future mode of high-speed transportation with applications in various fields including defence, logistics, and aerospace among others.
“Hyperloop would be paving the path for quicker and easier travel, especially in a country such as ours, with large population and with busy scheduled lives an environment-friendly mode of transportation,” said Sai Madhav. Hyperloop is seen as the future of transportation globally. Madhav believes that though the initial cost of setting up the system would be high, it would prove economical in the long run.