Avishkar Hyperloop — An inspiring tale of grit and tenacity
Knowing the peaks and valleys of the journey to build a Hyperloop pod with the IITM team.
The challenging task of building a sub-scale prototype transport vehicle and demonstrating the technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept was successfully completed by 21 teams across the world. Out of 1600 initial competitors, the only Asian team from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, fought its way to place amongst the final 21. To learn more on this awe-inspiring achievement, we sat down to talk with a few members of the IITM Avishkar Hyperloop team who recapitulated their arduous journey and the race against time to finish their product.
Q — First things first, How did you come up with this interesting symbol? Does it signify anything in particular?
(laughs) Nothing in particular. It was made by one of our members who came up with a mix and match of various designs. Hyperloop’s symbol is infinity, so we tried to bring that up in our symbol too.
Q — In what order did you proceed with the design? Normally you would have to decide on a motor and then built a control system upon it,right?
That would be an ideal case, but we did it differently since we had a limited time span of 3 months. All of the processes happened in parallel. If we had gone with this method, we wouldn’t have been able to meet the deadline.
This approach did make the integration of all components challenging. We had regular meetings wherein the members of each sub-team would mention their space requirements and other needs and we would all work in parallel. Coordination between all the teams was a challenge.
Q — How did you get sponsors and do marketing?
We got our results only by February. We had only 3 months within which we had to do raise funds and procure parts a few of which were from international companies. Then, there was the manufacturing, assembly and testing to be done. We had to do all of this within 3 months. We sat down and meticulously planned how we could get funds of 1 crore. We divided our avenues of funding to the following.
1. Our institute, which gave us our preliminary funds to begin, via the center for innovation.
2. Our alumni, We have a vast alumni network over 60 years.
3. The industry: We approached the industry, and told them about our concept and requested funding so that we could go to competitions with a working prototype and lend credibility to our design.
Apart from these, we also pursued crowdfunding via Ketto. These were our four main sources of funding. After pursuing all these avenues, things started falling into place. Our professors started approaching industries, their batch-mates, alumni, etc. We had to keep pushing the matter though, since the professors had busy schedules. We had our own time constraints and we had to be responsible for our college schedule as well.
Q — So, you’ll be meeting Elon Musk later?
If we manage to clear all the tests successfully there, then yes. Meeting him is something huge but he only gives his worthwhile time to the final teams. So he’ll only come for 10 minutes. But we’ll get to see all of the SpaceX and Tesla facilities.
Q — Are you aware of all the control tests which they will be expecting your model to clear?
They will provide a documentation regarding what you need to do when you participate in the competition. For example, your braking mechanism must be a fail-safe mechanism. If any of the components cross a particular temperature threshold, then it should actuate the brakes. Every requirement was not explicitly stated so we had to figure them out ourselves. But there are certain standards that were given to us which we follow.
Q — Hyperloop is called the 5th mode of transport. Building the vacuum structure only is very complicated and expensive. How feasible is it to implement in real life?
This is the same as how any other mode of transportation evolves. For example, consider airplanes. A century ago, nobody could have imagined that such large structures could fly and infrastructure that would be built to support them. The same goes for the hyperloop as well.
Feasibility studies have already been conducted and companies have already started working on the hyperloop.
7 years ago, the question of feasibility would have been a legitimate one. But, today there has been a lot of progress; MOUs have been signed, tunnels have been constructed in certain places and so on. People will take time to adapt to it but that is the same for any novel innovation or any new invention. Hyperloop is feasible in real life.
Q — One of the advantages of the Hyperloop is that it could be constructed anywhere.For example, it could even be built under the seabed to connect continents. Can you elucidate on this?
The Hyperloop doesn’t occupy much space, so it could be constructed like how we build bridges. They don’t occupy all the space on the road and the sides can still be used. It could be built similar to the metro-trains with the flat roads and the vacuum tube in the middle. One constraint is the straightness of the tube which has to be planned properly. A hyperloop is being built in India connecting Mumbai and Pune and an MOU has been signed. They are checking the feasibility of the route now using a 10km test track after which they will open the service to the public. Turning is a problem, but it can be done by using very gradual turns due to the speed of the pod. But a straight tube is preferable.
Q — How do you guarantee safety if there is a crash in the tube?
This is fundamentally how metro stations work. We can have an emergency station, say, once every 2 km. These stations would maintain the line and mend any problems immediately. Even otherwise, you have a system where there is a single line which is used for both forward and backward routes, like the Chennai metro. In case of any fault, all journeys are stopped. An alternative to this would be building multiple different routes, but that is not something that immediately happens. But this normally doesn’t happen for 15–20 years after which people adapt to the system and there is a literal need for this to happen.
Q — You are implying that we could build up a basic system and then add connections?
In our everyday trains, if we want to repair one of the tracks that is being continually used , the train can always be diverted to another track to continue the journey. But such facilities are available only after many years of evolution and a need to build alternative routes. But there are no modern metro systems where such facilities exist. One, because all the failure possibilities have been taken care of, and two, because metros aren’t used so meticulously that life would come to a standstill if they temporarily stopped. But the Indian railways are being used by the public with a lot of demand, so such alternatives had to be prepared. This process of building new tracks will take 15–20 years to reach that stage.
Seeing the development that has taken place in the last 5 years, when the hyperloop concept was just on paper, we can safely say that hyperloop will be in real life soon.
Next year, a hyperloop line will be open in Dubai for consumers. Seeing the pace of development occurring and the fact that the Indian government has been looking into obtaining bullet trains, this [hyperloop] is a plausible alternative to bullet trains. There is a lot of scope for it to come to India.
Q — You have so many diverse sub-teams, how do you coordinate between all of them?
We have set up the system in such a way that everyone in the team is approachable. We have team heads and we have group lead. We have 6 sub-teams in total and every group lead is in charge of 2 sub-teams. Each sub-team has a sub-team leader with the rest of our members separated into the sub-teams. So if we have any task, it is up to the members and sub-team leader to complete it. The group leaders coordinate with each other to maintain the integrity of all the sub-teams. We have the team head responsible for pulling everything together.
Q — What were the major difficulties you faced in this journey?
The main challenge was the starting point, because there were very few papers published in this field which we could use for implementation. There’s no specific mechanism that is supposed to be used for this project. There are teams who work with wheels, some work with magnetic propulsion rockets Everyone comes up with their own ideas and try to analyze which is the most efficient. Sometimes we may think our mechanism is ideal , but then there might be points we missed that won’t work out in that mechanism. Our professors would guide us in those scenarios.
Many companies turned us down for sponsorship citing that making a 1 crore worth project in 3 months is impossible, But now, in retrospect we have made it.
Things fell into place after we started working day in and day out. Our hard-work made this project a success.
Q — Are you planning to publish a research paper based on your design?
No, Not really. But, we are happy with the exposure we have given to other Indian colleges with regard to this competition. After we got selected, Many colleges here approached us, asking to join our team. Unfortunately, not many Indian colleges are aware of the competition and so, we did not have a lot of participants from India.
Q — Can you share some advice to students who wish to make such models?
When we start we always face a lot of hurdles. Stepping into a huge project, managing your academics and your extra- curricular work is hard, but it is absolutely worth it in the end. Once we had the prototype working, the happiness we felt made all the troubles we faced irrelevant. Our motive was not just to win the competition. It was to bring the project on paper to a complete form by using the state of the art technologies available. Being in one of the premium institutes of the country (in IITs or NITs), it gives us a sense of responsibility to make the fullest use of the resources made accessible to us. Grit and tenacity is all that is required.
What a journey! Pits and loops forgotten, the jubilation of achieving completion is sweet indeed. This talented team, comprising of students from Bachelors, Masters and PhD, are going to California with their pod to participate in the finals. Thank you very much for taking time out of your understandably busy schedule to talk with us. From Team Sensors and everyone else, we wish you the best of all the luck available!
This article was written in collaboration with Kumaresh Balaji and Vidya Krishnan
