Transcriber: Kyle Schmitt Reviewer: Aijia Yang
In New York City, in 1870,
someone named Alfred Beach created something called Pneumatic Transit,
which was a nomadic system underneath the NYC subway system
that used differential and air pressure
to move people from one point to the other.
This is one of the earliest form of subways in New York City.
Let’s go towards 1966.
In France, there is a system called the Aérotrain,
which was a 4.2-mile-long train
that used air levitation to move vehicles at pretty high speeds.
In 2015,
Elon Musk introduced a new form of transportation
called the Hyperloop.
This is a frictionless system that took people in these partially evacuated tubes
from elevated San Francisco or New York to Boston in 30 minutes.
He created a system, a one-mile-long test track.
It was a partially evacuated tunnel located at SpaceX HQ
and invited many folks around the world
to come build new vehicles to test it in this new tunnel system.
So we formed a team at MIT to tackle this challenge
and to see what we can do
in the new levitation systems and other forms of high-speed transit.
Our team was about 30 engineers,
mostly graduate or undergraduate students from different parts of MIT:
Aerospace Engineering, Chemical Engineering,
MIT Media Lab.
We had folks all over the place that were really interested
in pushing forward the envelope of transportation.
Our journey took us through several stages.
We had a phase one where we took the team through a design process.
We worked closely with space leadership to evaluate
and design our Hyperloop pod. We built around 200 pages of design documentation.
We went through initial testing and initial validation.
We submitted this document to Space X around January 2019,
and then we got it proved to be
a one out of 12 teams out of 400 plus that applied to this program.
And ultimately, in July of 2019,
we were able to demonstrate this technology at SpaceX HQ.
The tunnel system is very interesting.
They built around a six feet diameter tunnel that actually exists at SpaceX HQ,
and the system has a level of aluminum plates at
the very surface of it that lets the vehicle sit on
and travel as fast as possible.
There’s also an issue at the very center that its vehicles hold
on to it for stability purposes.
So we have to use these mechanical dimensions to design our own vehicle
and ultimately be able to demonstrate the proof that this system could work.
So our system was a little bit unique.
We basically built a system entirely built around our limitation.
And ultimately, whatever limitation is, as you can imagine,
instead of air coming out of the table comes out of a puck.
And so we took this idea basically put forward
a little air hockey pucks underneath a system,
created our own pneumatic regulation circuit.
Our own electronics are on high voltage, low voltage systems,
and we put a few air tanks on there to demonstrate
the concept that you can actually levitate
a system without any kind of magnets at all.
So the idea was that can we develop a cheaper,
more alternative form of levitation system than what exists today?
And our speed target was around 150 to 200 miles an hour,
and our system was supposed to work under partial vacuum.
So we actually demonstrated this pod at the MIT Museum and unveil events.
We had around 200 plus people there that came to check it out.
And we were excited about this because this really took
the concept of what you saw before with
the Alfred Beach pneumatic system going forward to
the French Eritrean and really kind of going forwards
the more compact electric hovercraft methodology.
We had a small test track that we built right inside MIT underneath the dome,
and there was actually one event on three weeks before
the competition actually happened where as we were testing
the battery systems in the vehicle, a small tear insulation caused a fire.
So you had to essentially rebuild the entire vehicle from scratch.
Three weeks before the competition and after we did that,
this is a moment where we put the shell on top and we're ready to go
for Space X HQ.
Our team had to go through hundreds of different tests
to make sure we were able to work in the Hyperloop.
Here we see Patrick Animatics lead and grad student from the University of TX
who helped us design and build a pneumatic system
and we were testing this to make sure that air levitation
worked properly, as it’s a very complex system.
We had high pressure, high voltage and a lot of other things in between.
We were then able to put the system in the Hyperloop and test it
in their partial vacuum tunnel.
We’re able to demonstrate levitation.
We're able to demonstrate electric motors
and able to show that this vehicle actually worked in the system.
As you can see here, there's a system at the very bottom,
which is the little air hockey puck. It’s essentially an inflatable balloon.
As you put air into it, it inflates and causes air to flow underneath the ballon.
And this causes the whole vehicle to lift and basically move
frictionlessly across the surface so you can actually move a 500 pound pod
with just the push of your finger.
And not only that, you can actually support up to 10,000 pounds of weight
with just this air hockey system here.
So here we have a small video of this system actually inflating
and then going through the tube autonomously.
And this is the first test of us showing that we can actually autonomously move
a system through this Hyperloop network using air levitation and electric motors.
So after all of this, we actually placed first in the U.S. for our work and
for proving that design works and passing all the tests.
And even despite the situation we had three weeks prior to the competition,
we were able to pull through and really come to the top of the competition.
There's so much more that we are hoping to do in the next stage of this program.
And as you know, Hyperloop has been around for five to six years
and we see this that in the next five to 10 years, really,
there will be a full scale system operational someday for all of us.
For next steps, we’re actually working with The Boring Company at SpaceX.
One of the biggest things we want to do is look at infrastructure for Hyperloop
Building a tunnel is expensive, and sometimes you want to
go under or above ground.
And so the Boring Company is building these networks under ground.
About a month ago, our new team was actually
out there in Las Vegas working on these
tunneling systems with SpaceX and The Boring Company.
Our hope is one day we can build the pod infrastructure
and work closely with companies like The Boring Company in order
for us to experiment and prove the case
that the system would work in the long term.
We’re super excited that the Hyperloop is a reality today,
and we know it's happening and will happen.
And hopefully the Boston area would be a center of excellence for us.
Our hope is to create a Hyperloop center of innovation and excellence at MIT.
And please follow us along at mithyperloop.mit.edu. Thank you so much.
(Applause)