"Badgerloop" won the Innovative Award during the SpaceX Hyperloop competition held outside SpaceX offices at Hawthorne, California. Undergraduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison designed this futuristic vehicle, which can travel at 760 miles per hour through a vacuum tube above ground.

SpaceX and Tesla motors sponsored the said event. Twenty-seven teams from different schools worldwide joined the competition. Instead of racing cars, levitating pods with the speed of an aircraft competed for the awards.

"Badgerloop" did not make it to the test run but it garnered the award for innovation. The team from UW-Madison that built "Badgerloop" were all undergraduates. The team had their prototypes tested in order to qualify for the test run. However, only three pods passed the tests and made the one-mile trip through the elevated vacuum tube. The team members were elated when Elon Musk took a seat in their pod. "Badgerloop" was customized to accommodate Musk,who is 6 feet and 2 inches tall, according to the UW-Madison News.

Once realized, Hyperloop vehicles will one of the fastest public modes of transportation. Passengers can ride in Hyperloop pods such as the "Badgerloop" and reach their destination in just a few minutes.

Of the 27 teams, only three were qualified for the test run. The pods sped through a mile of vacuum tube set above ground. The teams all came from Europe. Delft University of of Technology was the overall champion. University of Technology Munich was adjudged the fastest Hyperloop pod, according to Daily Planet.

The Hyperloop concept came from Elon Musk's white paper published in 2013. Must envisioned passengers traveling at great speed in levitating pods.

The UW-Madison team is now gearing for the next Hyperloop competition slated on the summer of this year. The team is now refining the pod. All members hope that "Badegerloop" will to be able to take the test run this time.

Topics Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, SpaceX