The Concept
In 2013, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX Elon Musk released a white paper in which he proposed a “fifth” mode of transportation called the Hyperloop. In essence, the idea comprised of pods or capsules carrying passengers at over 700 mph in overhead tubes supported on pylons. The tubes would be under near vacuum conditions, allowing for minimal drag throughout the journey, and a trip from LA to San Francisco would ideally last about 35 minutes. Incredible!
The Competition
Fast forward to summer of 2015: SpaceX announced an open competition, geared towards university students and independent engineering teams, to design and build the best Hyperloop pod. To support this competition, SpaceX is constructing a one-mile test track adjacent to their Hawthorne, California headquarters. The student team at the University of Waterloo, called Waterloop (pun intended), is participating in the main Design and Build category of the competition and recently submitted the final design package in January.
The Team: Waterloop
The Waterloop team currently has thirty active members, including several third and fourth year engineering students applying their skills and knowledge to make this concept a reality. The team is comprised of Levitation, Pod Body, Exterior Design, Braking, Embedded Systems, and Safety teams along with a Management team that deals with all the logistics, marketing, and sponsorship. Our pod is designed to be functional, manufacturable, low-cost, and competitive.
Design Weekend
SpaceX hosted the Design Weekend on Jan 29-30 at the Texas A&M University where over 1,000 students from all over the world came to showcase their pod designs. Over 180 teams representing four continents set up their individual booths open to sponsors, judges, and the public to explain their ideas and innovations that would transform the way we think about travelling. Each team also presented their design to a panel of judges (university professors and SpaceX/Tesla engineers) for technical critique. The Waterloop team had seven members that traveled to Texas to represent our team. A special thanks goes to Kik, our primary sponsor, who helped fund the trip. Our booth attracted a lot of attention from the public and sponsors alike, including CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, Rob Lloyd. The buzz and electricity of the place was incomparable – a hub of futuristic ideas – with a chance to meet and chat with so many bright students from all over the world and with engineers from SpaceX, Tesla, and Hyperloop Technologies. A celebration dinner was held at the closing of the weekend to commend everyone for their hard work and for the start of something completely revolutionary.
Results
Waterloop was one of the 22 teams selected from a total of 74 nominees to proceed to the final competition weekend in June at the SpaceX headquarters. This represents an immense achievement for everyone involved in our team and is just reward for the effort everybody has put in since the inauguration of the competition. Massachusetts Institute of Technology won the best overall design award (1st place). Teams from other universities also proceeding to the final round include TU Delft, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon, to name a few [1].
Future Plans
Waterloop is inviting graduate and undergraduate students to join our team and participate in the testing and prototyping phase which begins next week! The competition is scheduled for June so the team is targeting a competition-ready pod by early May. Our marketing and sponsorship teams are working tirelessly to secure invaluable sponsorship from companies that visited our booth and other sponsors who are interested. Let’s all make Waterloo and Canada proud!
- See the full results at: http://hyperloop.tamu.edu/news-release-january-30-2016/
Recruiting Email: info@uwhyperloop.com
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