Taking shifts at the wheel in two 15-passenger vans, it took students traveling from Florida to Texas last weekend about 15 hours to drive a little over 900 miles. If the technology they are helping to develop gets off the ground, they might someday cover that distance in less than 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHyperloop\u201d is a high-speed transportation design concept introduced by engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk. In 2013, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla challenged the world to develop the concept from his open-source designs. In the first round of competitions last week, over 120 teams from around the world presented plans for moving forward \u2013 specifically on designs for the pods that will carry passengers and cargo. Only 29 college teams were selected to build prototypes for a final round of competition this summer. The University of Florida\u2019s Gatorloop team was one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they said our name, it was so surreal,\u201d said Taylor Waber, captain of UF\u2019s Gatorloop team. \u201cThere were so many great designs presented, we really weren\u2019t sure that we\u2019d make the cut.\u201d<\/p>\n
The students \u2013 who represent six different majors, all housed within the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering \u2013 later analyzed the selection process, trying to pinpoint what had set them apart from other contenders like Stanford and Georgia Tech. Waber believes they got their answer when Musk responded to a question from the audience after the award ceremony. He was asked which of the two design camps he leaned towards \u2013 maglev or air bearings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is<\/em> also the wheels camp . . .\u201d Musk said, laughing. He offered this advice to the teams: \u201cIf you\u2019re trying to create a company, it\u2019s important to limit the number of miracles in series.\u201d<\/p>\n Gatorloop was one of only two university teams who integrated wheels into their design.<\/p>\n Read more on the UF<\/a> or Gatorloop<\/a> websites.<\/p>\n Writer:<\/strong> Jen Ambrose; jenambrose@eng.ufl.edu<\/p>\n Contact:<\/strong> Taylor Waber; tdwaber@ufl.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UF was selected to build a prototype for a high speed transportation concept proposed by SpaceX & Tesla CEO Elon Musk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-sidebar-none.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,15,19,23,35,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cise","category-ece","category-ise","category-mae","category-featured","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38545,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18450\/revisions\/38545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}