Overview
Swissloop is one of Europe's leading Hyperloop student teams, founded at ETH Zürich in 2016. Each year, a new team of ~38 students designs, builds, and tests a fully functional Hyperloop prototype from scratch. In the 2022/23 season I was one of five full‑time electrical engineers responsible for the pod «Bertrand Piccard», the first completely levitating prototype in Swissloop's history.
The pod was presented at the European Hyperloop Week 2023 in Edinburgh, where the team won 5 of 10 awards, including the main Complete System Award, the Electrical Subsystem Award, Traction Subsystem Award, Sense & Control Award, and the Thermal Management Award.
Pod «Bertrand Piccard»
A carbon‑fibre monocoque chassis weighing only 21 kg, housing a linear switched reluctance motor, electromagnetic levitation & guidance, a vacuum‑compatible phase‑change cooling system, and a 24‑module LiPo battery pack.
Exploded view of the pod subsystems
My Contributions
- Designed and operated the 800 V / 250 A high‑power battery system: 24 LiPo modules in a single autonomous battery box with integrated BMS and isolation monitoring.
- Developed BMS hardware (PCB design in Altium) and embedded firmware in C/C++ and SystemVerilog, running on STM32H7 microcontrollers and FPGAs.
- Implemented real‑time monitoring for 290+ safety sensors across CAN‑FD buses, feeding into the vehicle control system for autonomous fault detection.
- Contributed to upgrading the entire power electronics from 400 V to 800 V system voltage, including inverter modules for the propulsion and levitation systems.
Thesis & Publication
The design of the battery and power supply system also served as the foundation for my Bachelor's Thesis at ETH Zürich.
View PublicationPod Run
«Bertrand Piccard» reaching 58.8 km/h in 30 m of acceleration, completely contactless on electromagnetic levitation and guidance.