good afternoon everyone my name is Vic
and I’m over at MIT Media Lab doing some
research there I’ve always been
passionate about transportation ships
have carried us across oceans to explore
vast new places we’ve had trains that
have essentially unlocked ability to
kind of explore the landscape of the US
and other parts of the world we’ve also
had the Model T from Henry Ford which
basically democratized the notion of
transportation and allowed us to
basically have our own way to get around
places and obviously we have planes the
Wright brothers created a whole new way
to kind of explore the world however
we’re still packed ourselves in these
densely populated cities with no way to
no way to really get around I’m actually
gonna go to New York this weekend I’m
kind of dreading the traffic that I’m
gonna be hitting on the way there
and we come up with different kind of
technologies to enable better ways to
get around for example in Japan and
China you have maglev trains would go at
315 miles an hour to go
various place to place but these trains
are really expensive and there’s a
reason why they haven’t been introduced
in the US and you see the Amtrak there’s
a little situation there and we commonly
see this every day with maintenance and
have things Eponine with railway systems
today and there’s a huge progress
towards autonomous vehicles but I don’t
think autonomous vehicles were really
solve the issue of transportation in
traffic and obviously on the roads today
especially in places like Texas where
I’m originally from there’s so many
trucks on the road making it harder for
us to get around
now in 2013 Elon Musk the CEO space mix
announced the new transportation system
a fifth mode of transportation called
the Hyperloop imagine an elevated tube
or an underground tunnel that is
pneumatically driven using his pods that
go through these two plaits 700 miles an
hour imagine we’re a society where you
can go from New York to Boston 30
minutes and be able to go from LA to San
Francisco in 30 minutes and essentially
you’d be driving travelling like the
Jetsons and these tight little tiny pods
but that go really fast and these pods
are essentially suspended on air and
they’re pushed through a comedic system
that allows you to go at 700 miles an
hour now Elon Musk originally said that
magnetic levitation which is a core
component of this time travel is too
expensive and not in in constructionist
prohibitive now how we make the system
cheaper if we want to make a Hyperloop
happen today we can’t really use
conventional methods of approaches to
kind of build as technology so if some
team team of engineers and I were
discussing this some in the classroom
back when I was in grad school over in
Texas and we were just wondering like
how can you make the system travel like
much more efficient cost-effective and
easy to use and we’ve designed this
whole vehicle for Elon SpaceX tunnel to
levitate on a bed of air imagine we’re
in this vehicle it contains a little air
hockey pucks imagine instead of air
coming out of the table comes out of
these tiny little pucks and basically
having a few air tanks on these in this
system you can essentially have your own
hovercraft and this hovercraft creates
an ax system where there’s no friction
at all which means you don’t have to
worry about drag or anything as you’re
floating through this tunnel
now we took this air hockey puck and
then we essentially built our own system
around it we started with the mechanical
side my friend Chad essentially welded
an entire frame together
I hope to build electronic stress system
we essentially from the pneumatics to
the controls to the propulsion system
everything was built from scratch and
then Patrick here designed a pneumatic
system which regulated the airflow into
those little air hockey pucks
and then we Shep some air tanks on there
and then build their own test track
outside in the heat and then basically
just started you know doing some
hovercraft tests and it worked it’s the
first time that we were demonstrating
this kind of technology for a
frictionless transport
this is a little video showcasing our
first remote test
as you can see the vehicle levitates on
air and as you move around it’s held to
the monorail which is basically keeping
the vehicle stable in the center beam
and as the vehicle is it’s not even
touching the ground basically it’s a
little air disc that’s levitating on air
and it’s basically you can move it with
barely any force at all and when it’s
not levitating you wouldn’t be able to
move the vehicle at all because there’s
several hundreds of pounds on that
system and then we brought this vehicle
to SpaceX they saw sort of our work that
we were doing and they thought okay well
maybe these guys are onto something and
so we demonstrated this technology in
their vacuum chamber over at SpaceX HQ
and you know Ilan and his you know
henchmen all were there and they were at
all just talking about this work and
actually his one of his VP of SpaceX who
designed the Falcon 9 rocket actually
came up to us he’s wondering man this is
stuff like we haven’t never seen this
before like how can we you know sort of
see this kind of progress further and so
we got to test it in their vacuum tube
and we see there’s the first time we’re
levitating this sort of an air bearing
system in the vacuum
and then we won an Innovation Award for
our work during the SpaceX Hyperloop
competition last year in August 2017
and our team was wondering okay well
we’ve proved this and how do we sort of
make this kind of commercialize how can
we bring it out to the industry how can
I bring it out to the public I mean if
we really believe in this technology to
make Hyperloop transport cheaper can we
can we just make it happen now and so
our team decided to develop this
technology out further based on this
whole new era levitation Hyperloop
concept to achieve a theoretical max of
700 miles an hour at a lower cost
compared to like the magnetic levitation
systems so our whole purpose to make a
system of travel much cheaper and
efficient than what we see today
and so this is our new vehicle design
that we’re building currently it’s only
set for at 300 miles an hour but it’s
the first time you’ll ever see something
work at the speeds using the type of
technology we’re using and so our hope
is to demonstrate this technology yearly
next year at back at SpaceX and continue
to build for the technology and working
with SpaceX and other companies to make
it happen
and so we even built our own test track
and so we’ve been working on this you
know during our night time or day jobs
or whatever it may be to make this
happen in reality our whole purpose
isn’t to make travel much easier and
simpler for people
and so recently Elon Musk announced his
company the boring company which digs
tunnels underground that they’re
building tunnels under la in Baltimore
and other cities in the US and we’re
actually excited to say that we’ll be
working with this company to kind of
test our technology in their systems and
so our hope is that we want to create a
Hyperloop system all around the u.s. we
really believe that this new method of
levitation is so key to this big
component of transportation and if we
can’t make systems that are cheaper and
efficient and made better for people to
travel it’s it’s harder for us to
experience this kind of a this ability
to kind of get around to places I’ve
always wanted to go to New York and 30
minutes every weekend but every time I’m
stuck in traffic and I would love to
experience an – loop or pneumatic system
that would take us there yeah so I’m so
happy to kind of talk about this and
then you know it’s it’s exciting to see
where it’s going and our hope is to
build out a system for the whole feature
and see where we can take this in
America today Thanks [Applause]
and I’m over at MIT Media Lab doing some
research there I’ve always been
passionate about transportation ships
have carried us across oceans to explore
vast new places we’ve had trains that
have essentially unlocked ability to
kind of explore the landscape of the US
and other parts of the world we’ve also
had the Model T from Henry Ford which
basically democratized the notion of
transportation and allowed us to
basically have our own way to get around
places and obviously we have planes the
Wright brothers created a whole new way
to kind of explore the world however
we’re still packed ourselves in these
densely populated cities with no way to
no way to really get around I’m actually
gonna go to New York this weekend I’m
kind of dreading the traffic that I’m
gonna be hitting on the way there
and we come up with different kind of
technologies to enable better ways to
get around for example in Japan and
China you have maglev trains would go at
315 miles an hour to go
various place to place but these trains
are really expensive and there’s a
reason why they haven’t been introduced
in the US and you see the Amtrak there’s
a little situation there and we commonly
see this every day with maintenance and
have things Eponine with railway systems
today and there’s a huge progress
towards autonomous vehicles but I don’t
think autonomous vehicles were really
solve the issue of transportation in
traffic and obviously on the roads today
especially in places like Texas where
I’m originally from there’s so many
trucks on the road making it harder for
us to get around
now in 2013 Elon Musk the CEO space mix
announced the new transportation system
a fifth mode of transportation called
the Hyperloop imagine an elevated tube
or an underground tunnel that is
pneumatically driven using his pods that
go through these two plaits 700 miles an
hour imagine we’re a society where you
can go from New York to Boston 30
minutes and be able to go from LA to San
Francisco in 30 minutes and essentially
you’d be driving travelling like the
Jetsons and these tight little tiny pods
but that go really fast and these pods
are essentially suspended on air and
they’re pushed through a comedic system
that allows you to go at 700 miles an
hour now Elon Musk originally said that
magnetic levitation which is a core
component of this time travel is too
expensive and not in in constructionist
prohibitive now how we make the system
cheaper if we want to make a Hyperloop
happen today we can’t really use
conventional methods of approaches to
kind of build as technology so if some
team team of engineers and I were
discussing this some in the classroom
back when I was in grad school over in
Texas and we were just wondering like
how can you make the system travel like
much more efficient cost-effective and
easy to use and we’ve designed this
whole vehicle for Elon SpaceX tunnel to
levitate on a bed of air imagine we’re
in this vehicle it contains a little air
hockey pucks imagine instead of air
coming out of the table comes out of
these tiny little pucks and basically
having a few air tanks on these in this
system you can essentially have your own
hovercraft and this hovercraft creates
an ax system where there’s no friction
at all which means you don’t have to
worry about drag or anything as you’re
floating through this tunnel
now we took this air hockey puck and
then we essentially built our own system
around it we started with the mechanical
side my friend Chad essentially welded
an entire frame together
I hope to build electronic stress system
we essentially from the pneumatics to
the controls to the propulsion system
everything was built from scratch and
then Patrick here designed a pneumatic
system which regulated the airflow into
those little air hockey pucks
and then we Shep some air tanks on there
and then build their own test track
outside in the heat and then basically
just started you know doing some
hovercraft tests and it worked it’s the
first time that we were demonstrating
this kind of technology for a
frictionless transport
this is a little video showcasing our
first remote test
as you can see the vehicle levitates on
air and as you move around it’s held to
the monorail which is basically keeping
the vehicle stable in the center beam
and as the vehicle is it’s not even
touching the ground basically it’s a
little air disc that’s levitating on air
and it’s basically you can move it with
barely any force at all and when it’s
not levitating you wouldn’t be able to
move the vehicle at all because there’s
several hundreds of pounds on that
system and then we brought this vehicle
to SpaceX they saw sort of our work that
we were doing and they thought okay well
maybe these guys are onto something and
so we demonstrated this technology in
their vacuum chamber over at SpaceX HQ
and you know Ilan and his you know
henchmen all were there and they were at
all just talking about this work and
actually his one of his VP of SpaceX who
designed the Falcon 9 rocket actually
came up to us he’s wondering man this is
stuff like we haven’t never seen this
before like how can we you know sort of
see this kind of progress further and so
we got to test it in their vacuum tube
and we see there’s the first time we’re
levitating this sort of an air bearing
system in the vacuum
and then we won an Innovation Award for
our work during the SpaceX Hyperloop
competition last year in August 2017
and our team was wondering okay well
we’ve proved this and how do we sort of
make this kind of commercialize how can
we bring it out to the industry how can
I bring it out to the public I mean if
we really believe in this technology to
make Hyperloop transport cheaper can we
can we just make it happen now and so
our team decided to develop this
technology out further based on this
whole new era levitation Hyperloop
concept to achieve a theoretical max of
700 miles an hour at a lower cost
compared to like the magnetic levitation
systems so our whole purpose to make a
system of travel much cheaper and
efficient than what we see today
and so this is our new vehicle design
that we’re building currently it’s only
set for at 300 miles an hour but it’s
the first time you’ll ever see something
work at the speeds using the type of
technology we’re using and so our hope
is to demonstrate this technology yearly
next year at back at SpaceX and continue
to build for the technology and working
with SpaceX and other companies to make
it happen
and so we even built our own test track
and so we’ve been working on this you
know during our night time or day jobs
or whatever it may be to make this
happen in reality our whole purpose
isn’t to make travel much easier and
simpler for people
and so recently Elon Musk announced his
company the boring company which digs
tunnels underground that they’re
building tunnels under la in Baltimore
and other cities in the US and we’re
actually excited to say that we’ll be
working with this company to kind of
test our technology in their systems and
so our hope is that we want to create a
Hyperloop system all around the u.s. we
really believe that this new method of
levitation is so key to this big
component of transportation and if we
can’t make systems that are cheaper and
efficient and made better for people to
travel it’s it’s harder for us to
experience this kind of a this ability
to kind of get around to places I’ve
always wanted to go to New York and 30
minutes every weekend but every time I’m
stuck in traffic and I would love to
experience an – loop or pneumatic system
that would take us there yeah so I’m so
happy to kind of talk about this and
then you know it’s it’s exciting to see
where it’s going and our hope is to
build out a system for the whole feature
and see where we can take this in
America today Thanks [Applause]
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