Rupert Cruise

WITSIES WITH THE EDGE

RUPERT CRUISE

BSc Eng 1994, MSc Eng 1999

Rupert Cruise

Magway Air Surf

These days, when we want something from the shop, we want it right now. And we prefer to get it in a way that’s kind to the planet and to our pockets. That’s where linear motors come in.

UK-based Witsie Rupert Cruise (BSc Eng 1994, MSc Eng 1999) has been working on this technology for 20 years and is now the MD of Magway, a company that has been awarded UK government funding to build a demonstration version of a package delivery system near London.

The system uses linear electric motors and permanent magnets allowing a vehicle (like a mini-train or a capsule) to move through pipes less than a metre in diameter on land or underground. The linear motor creates a magnetic wave that propels the magnets on the vehicle forward.

The system produces no emissions, is highly reliable, reduces congestion, accidents and maintenance on roads, and has relatively low operating and installation costs. Magway, which describes itself as a “delivery utility”, is focusing on freight at this point, unlike Elon Musk and Richard Branson’s “hyperloop” plans for transporting people.

Another Witsie, Bradley Smith (BSc Eng 1998), has recently joined Magway as lead project engineer to help implement the system. Cruise observes that “in the mid 1990s, the Machines and Drives Research Group (headed by Professor Charles Landy) led the world in the development of permanent magnet linear motors. It is wonderful to see how this technology, developed decades ago at Wits University, is now having a positive social and economic impact on a global scale.”