So at some point during my junior year of undergrad, Elon Musk announced ouced the first ever Hyperloop competition, the aim of which was to design and build a high speed pod that could transport passengers in a network of underground tunnels. I was part of the first hyperloop team at the University of Washington as part of the systems control subteam. Our main task was the electrical connection and sensor communication of the pod. I specically worked on designing the motor subsystem which had to spin and tilt large neodynmium magnets so that the pod could levitate from the metal tracks and move forward at desired speeds.

Our design won against 50 worldwide teams in our chosen category of saftey and in the top 10 for overall design. When presented at the competition we won several industry sponserships. This was a great experience in embedded control and system design as programming was conducted in C and C++ and I encounted my first experience with communication protocols (UART and CAN).

I worked with Antony Grigore and Jon Lundlee as part of the systems team but the wider hyperloop team was 60 people strong.