An almost airless tube in whose vacuum capsules move at tremendous speeds: In a hyperloop like this, you could dash and travel between two cities as fast as you could in an aeroplane. All this is not merely fantasy for the engineers at the Technical University of Munich; they want to turn the vision of the hyperloop into reality as a sustainable mobility service. According to the research group’s plans, in the not-too-distant future, transport and passenger capsules are set to speed people and goods to their destinations at 900 kilometres an hour. Journeys in the hyperloop could, for example, replace short-haul flights within Germany. They will operate purely on electricity, so with green electricity they’ll be climate-neutral.

The present version of the hyperloop is 24 metres short. In this testing tube, the team at TU Munich is trying out the drive, the levitation technology and the behaviour of the transport capsule – known as the “pod” – in the vacuum. The first journey in the pod took place on 10 July 2023. And successfully so: The test facility was placed under vacuum conditions, and the passenger capsule, manned by engineers, set off almost weightlessly. Soon, hyperloop rides should last a few seconds longer – in a tube that will then be 1,000 metres long.

The research group is now able to show what future hyperloop systems might look like. The shift from model scale to real dimensions and, in particular, Europe’s first passenger test under vacuum conditions are important milestones for scaling up the technology and realising longer test segments in the near future. The team is not only doing the maths for the drive technology but also calculating the costs for regular operation between two conurbations in Germany, for example. The surprising finding is that construction of the hyperloop would be no more expensive than building a new intercity rail line.

Artificial intelligence systems are a global trend. AI solutions are set to define our future in all areas of life – from smartphones to industry and office applications, through to medical advances. It is therefore all the more important that they meet certain quality standards and work reliably – in other words, that they can be trusted. Ultimately, only the kind of artificial intelligence we can trust will prevail on the market, while the vision of AI taking control over human beings at some point should become a reality nowhere other than in dystopian films.

In order to promote and demonstrate the quality of AI systems, the federal state of Hesse and VDE, the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies, established Germany’s first “AI Quality & Testing Hub” at the end of 2022. Here, companies from the healthcare, financial and mobility sectors in particular are able to verify and improve the quality characteristics of AI systems they have developed themselves. In November 2023 the hub was appointed to a consortium that is developing a voluntary AI quality seal, all part of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport’s “AI Mission”.

The experts at the AI Quality & Testing Hub advise and support companies in application development, testing, data management and quality assurance. A crucial element is ongoing learning and developing the expertise of employees among the client companies. Just as AI gets ever better with repeated training, the AI teams themselves also enjoy continuous education and training programmes. The content includes the basics of AI quality, the technological environments and the current legal framework. The hub can also provide advice on whether companies’ own AI systems and processes meet all the necessary security and compliance standards. Those who consistently follow this path create trust in their own AI developments – and thus get a head start for the future.