CHENNAI: A centre of excellence for Hyperloop technology will be set up at IIT Madras and the Ministry of Railways will provide Rs 8.34 crore for it.Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Thursday, visited the IIT Madras campus and interacted with Team Avishkar, which is working on the Hyperloop project and watched a demonstration of the project.
Hyperloop is a futuristic mode of transportation wherein a high-speed train travels in a near-vacuum tube. The Hyperloop model proposed by Team Avishkar can achieve a top speed of over 1,200 km per hour. The team is spearheading Hyperloop Tube research in India and has already patented a novel and cost-effective tube design.
The IIT Madras had submitted a research proposal to work in collaboration with the Railways for indigenous development and validation of the technology and the Railways has approved Rs 8.34 crore for the project, said the minister. This also includes setting up the centre of excellence on Hyperloop technology.
Notably, Elon Musk had proposed the idea of Hyperloop to the world in 2013. Team Avishkar is aiming to build the world’s largest student-developed Hyperloop testing facility at IIT Madras and has plans to complete the construction of this 500-metre long facility by this year at Discovery Campus.
During his visit to 5G testbed, Vaishnaw tested a 5G call. The minister said the end to end network is designed and developed in India and tweeted about the same. Vaishnaw also visited the research park on IIT campus and oversaw the 5G Testbed demonstration and later inspected the IIT-M Incubation Cell. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has funded a large scale 5G testbed project to encourage Indian start-ups in the sector.