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The current transportation infrastructure is outdated and inefficient. With increasing urbanization and current mass transit solutions crumbling in major cities like New York and Boston, the problem is only going to get worse, with more and more cars clogging roads. The time is right for a radical new high-speed transit system. An exciting candidate to fill that role is the Hyperloop, which is a high-speed tube transit concept by SpaceX. A hyperloop pod travels at top speeds along a track with variable air pressure and arrives at the destination safely. Unlike a subway, this system would provide super-fast travel over longer distances and be able to take cars off of busy highways. In support of this development, the Hyperloop Electronics Core (HEC) provides on-board electronics systems for a hyperloop pod, allowing for successful command and control of the pod leading to a safe and fast run.

The HEC includes subsystems in the pod including power conversion and the central control board. By focusing on these systems, the product provides a custom solution that allows for a reusable control scheme for future iterations of the pod to build upon.

One of the major components of the HEC is the central control board, which includes the main microprocessor (MCU), external storage, on-board IMU, and connections to all external electronics in the pod. The external storage is used for pod data logging to store run data for separate analysis outside of test runs, while the on-board IMU is used for local checking of the pod’s movements and for consensus checks with the external sensors.

Another major component of the HEC is the power conversion system. The HEC provides power to the components of the pod via the batteries safely through two stages of power conversion. The first stage is a power distribution board includes a switch mode boost converter that would bring the line voltage to a high level suitable for traveling the power harnessing to the endpoint conversion boards throughout the pod. These endpoint conversion boards facilitate the second stage of power conversion via a buck converter to converter the harness voltage to appropriate periphery voltage levels. The batteries and related Battery Management System (BMS) will feed power and battery status information to a secondary MCU located on the power distribution board centered around power monitoring and failsafe pod shutdown. This MCU will communicate critical information from the BMS and individual conversion boards to the main MCU.

HEC will also manage the pod’s telemetry. It will process all incoming commands and packetizes telemetry to send out via an ethernet connection to from the main MCU to an external radio. HEC can be manually controlled for braking from a remote ground station or autonomously sends signals to actuate brakes based on telemetry data and empirical data for the brakes, allowing for a safe and controlled journey.

All components of the HEC are designed to work in a low-pressure environment where passive air cooling is at a minimum. This will drive the design of the power conversion and handling, the active data processing of the control board, and the long-range capabilities of the wireless communications system to be efficient and unique. Future iterations of the design will benefit by having the completed system to build upon. Additionally, the product can be incorporated in other low-pressure transportation vehicles.