IIT-M team undertakes detailed study on Bengaluru-Chennai hyperloop corridor

Avishkar Hyperloop, a team from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), is working on a detailed study for a Hyperloop corridor between Bengaluru and Chennai to assess the economic feasibility of the new technology.

Team Avishkar estimates the travel time between the city pair to reduce to a mere 30-minute ride from the current six hours journey by car or train, the institute said on Friday, maintaining that the economic feasibility of Hyperloop in the country is being studied.

The detailed study is being carried out after an initial study by the team. The two cities are already well connected by air, train, and road, and the team is studying the cost that will be involved in building the infrastructure for the Hyperloop corridor and its economic feasibility.

“Many corporate employees shuttle between the two cities, and this is one of the reasons for us choosing the Bengaluru-Chennai corridor. Hyperloop can also be used to transport cargo and we thought of finding out the feasibility of such a corridor between India's very own silicon valley and its port city,” Neel Balar, Team Avishkar Lead, told DH.

He added that the team was also conducting a detailed study on the current traffic between the two cities, besides the impact that the Hyperloop corridor will have on the environment. “We have found that a Hyperloop corridor between the two cities could offset the carbon emissions of two lakh people,” he said, adding that they are studying the sustainability of the model.

The institute gave away this piece of information while announcing that the IIT-M team has qualified for the European Hyperloop Week to be held in Spain from July 19 to 25. Due to pandemic restrictions, Team Avishkar will participate in the competition virtually.

The team has revamped the pods’ sub-systems with scalable and efficient technologies and manufactured and tested a hyperloop pod prototype during the pandemic. Students part of the team collaborated closely from home and made this possible, the institute said on Friday.

Team Avishkar was adjudged as one of the top 21 teams out of 1,600 participating in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition 2019. This was the only team from Asia to have made it to the finals. Now, the team will participate in the European Hyperloop Week.

Avishkar Hyperloop is the student team from Centre For Innovation (CFI), IIT-M, which is working on an indigenous design and development of a self-propelled, completely autonomous Hyperloop Pod in India.

Hyperloop is the 5th mode of transportation, a high-speed train that travels in a near-vacuum tube. The reduced air resistance allows the capsule inside the tube to reach speeds of more than 1000 km/hour. More than a competition, the European Hyperloop Week is a confluence of student teams, start-ups, and companies working in the Hyperloop domain, the institute said.