Avishkar Hyperloop, From IIT Madras, Reaches The Finals Of Space X Hyperloop Competition

Elon Musk is considered to be one of the most influential revolutionists of our times. After changing the game with PayPal and Tesla, Musk moved his attention to the Hyperloop technology which has been in the news for a long time now. His firm, Space X, holds a global competition every year where they invite students from different parts of the world to design and build high-speed Hyperloop pods. The competition is known as Hyperloop Pod Competition and this year, Avishkar Hyperloop, from IIT Madras becomes the only team from Asia to reach the finals.

Avishkar Hyperloop is one of the 22 teams to qualify for the finals that are going to be held in July in California.

However, reaching the final stage was not as easy as it seems. More than 1600 teams participated in the first round of the competition and out of these, only 22 were able to reach the final stage. 21 out of these 22 teams are from the US and Europe, making Avishkar Hyperloop the only team from Asia.

This is also not the first time when this particular team has entered the competition. Last year, the team qualified for the preliminary design round as one of the 47 teams out of the 1500 competing teams.

As for Avishkar Hyperloop, they have created a prototype Hyperloop pod that is able to travel from Chennai to Bengaluru in just 25 minutes. As per the team, their pod is likely to achieve 400 to 450 kmph during the finals to be held in July.

While talking with YourStory, Ankit Kukudia who is the co-head of the team said, “Considering the difficulty of the design round and the complexity involved in Hyperloop implementation, it is a really great achievement to be able to qualify for the final round in the second attempt.” He also mentioned that they have decided to keep the design as basic as possible and have put in a lot of efforts to reduce the weight which eventually helps the pod to achieve the top speed.

The team consists of 30 members with people ranging from freshman graduates to Ph.D. scholars, though the heads are all postgraduates.

Avishkar Hyperloop is aiming to be India’s first self-propelled and autonomous hyperloop pod, and for this, they have been raising money through crowdsourcing on Ketto.

The Hyperloop Pod Competition is open to students and non-students from all around the world and its basic aim is to test a subscale prototype transport vehicle. The competition is in its fourth edition and was started in 2015. WARR Hyperloop, from the Technical University of Munich, has been winning the competition from the last two years. While in 2017 their pod won with the speed of 323 km per hour, in 2018 the team recorded the speed of 467 km per hour.

An Overview – Team Avishkar Hyperloop: Watch the video here:

What is Hyperloop?

Hyperloop is the next big thing in the transportation industry and it could completely revolutionalize the way we travel. The Hyperloop pods carrying passengers travel through tubes or tunnels without any kind of air resistance or friction. This technology can not only transport passengers but can also transport freight objects at an unbelievable speed.

As per various researches, Hyperloop is said to be far cheaper and faster than normal trains and car travels, plus far less polluting than air travel. Even though the technology is still in its development phase, the earliest any Hyperloop is likely to be up and running is 2021 which is going to be very exciting for the world and for the transportation industry.

In the end, we would like to congratulate Avishkar Hyperloop and wiss them luck for the finals. If you also want to contribute to this brilliant idea by team Avishkar Hyperloop then you can contribute to their project on Ketto.

For contributing to the team, click here.

Jyotsna Amla