The Ministry of Railways, Government of India will provide Rs 8.34 crore for setting up a centre of excellence for Hyperloop technology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT Madras).

While visiting the IIT Madras campus in Chennai on Thursday, May 19, Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw interacted with the team that is working on the hyperloop project, Team Avishkar. 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.

For the indigenous development and validation of the technology, IIT Madras had submitted a research proposal to work in collaboration with the Railways. Following this, Railways has approved Rs 8.34 crore for the project, said the minister, as stated in a report by TNIE.

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.

It is the idea of Team Avishkar to build the largest student-developed Hyperloop testing facility in the world at IIT Madras. As per their plan, they would like to complete the construction of this 500-metre long facility by this year. This facility will be constructed at Discovery Campus, the satellite campus of IIT Madras, located about 35 km from the main campus.

Vaishnaw also visited the research park on the 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. The goal of the project was to build a testbed that closely resembles a real-world 5G deployment.