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Edinburgh’s HypED team
The university’s Hyperloop team – also known as ‘HypED’ – is one of only four teams from Europe that will compete as a finalist in the SpaceX Pod Competition, which is being organised by California-based aerospace manufacturer SpaceX.
RS is supporting HypED in the building of the prototype pod with the supply of components including semiconductors, batteries, cabling and connectors, switches, heatsinks and a range of mechanical parts.
Hyperloop is a new concept in mass transportation. It uses electric propulsion to accelerate a pod or capsule through a low-pressure tube. It is believed that this can be used to transport people safely across distances of up to 900 miles and at speeds faster than a commercial airliner.
The Edinburgh team comprises more than 50 students from the University. It was initially formed in 2015 to enter into the SpaceX Hyperloop Design Weekend competition, which was held in Texas in January 2016 and where the team won the ‘Subsystem Excellence Technical Award’.
For the new competition, HypED will comprise three sub-teams that will build the key elements of the prototype pod, including: static elements such as chassis, shell and aerodynamics; dynamic elements, such as levitation, propulsion and braking; and ‘smart’ elements, such as batteries, control electronics and software.
HypED also has a business team to study the feasibility of a Hyperloop system in the UK.
The team is proposing a London-Birmingham–Manchester–Edinburgh route, connecting major centres of economic and social activity along the ‘spine’ of the country, and is presenting its proposal at the Hyperloop One Global Challenge event in Amsterdam this week.
Cameron Ward, senior vice president of innovation at RS, writes:
“The Hyperloop concept is clearly a truly disruptive technology that could change the face of transportation. We look forward to bringing news from the HypED team and the SpaceX Pod Competition to our DesignSpark community, which itself was initiated to bring engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs and students together to share designs, ideas and exciting new concepts.”
In addition to RS, HypED is also being supported and financed by Cirrus Logic and the University of Edinburgh Innovative Initiative Grant.
