Who is CU Hyperloop
Founded at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2017, CU Hyperloop is a student team that previously competed in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition and most recently, in The Boring Company’s Not-a-Boring Competition. The competition challenges teams from across the world to design and build a tunnel boring machine, or TBM, capable of excavating a 0.5m diameter tunnel with a length of at least 30m. Fastest (and most accurate) tunnel wins!
Our Design
This year, the team’s design is centered around the new Arduino Portenta H7, a powerful board in the Arduino Pro line that’s perfect for our industrial application. The Portenta will be responsible for controlling all aspects of the TBM: its larger main excavation motor, the slurry removal pump and trapdoor, the main propulsion hydraulics and electric steering actuators, and the semi-autonomous control algorithms. In addition, it will be relaying critical telemetry information back to the ground station computer where CU Hyperloop operators will be monitoring for any inconsistencies.
The Next Steps
As there aren’t a lot of ready-built shields and addons for the Portent H7 just yet, and given our demanding and somewhat niche application, we’re designing our own boards to integrate with our hardware. This will include a small Sensor Integration Board for our specialized inertial measurement units as well as a Main Printed Circuit Board for connecting all other project components to the Portenta H7 in a vibration and environmental tolerant way (we expect the inside of our TBM to get pretty muddy). We’ll make sure to share more about these boards and how we’re using our Arduino in future posts!
The team is currenting fundraising to help purchase critical components for this year’s design. If you’d like to contribute, you can make a tax deductible donation to the team. You can also follow the team on our Instagram or visit our website.