R&D | EDUCATION
In 2020, a number of engineering and business students at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, together identified an opportunity to contribute to valuable progress in a worldwide relevant area: tunneling. Implementing this by working on a tangible product remained an undisputable goal from the beginning. It was decided to achieve this product goal by the students forming a team to self-develop their own tunnel boring machine (TBM). This article highlights the project’s journey, its
milestones, and technological futures of ‘Groundhog Beta’ – the TBM already showing promising results to challenge the status quo of conventional tunneling. Prior to this landmark decision to pursue the goal
of achieving a breakthrough in tunneling technology, some of the students had been involved in research for Hyperloop technology via the Swissloop team. This technology, of course, could make future high- speed traveling possible to an extent that is currently inconceivable. However, the students also became aware of tunneling as a further opportunity to drive meaningful innovation that, in the end, could benefit the expansion of infrastructure systems on a global scale. A new student-led team – Swissloop Tunneling –
was formed that was more focused on the underground challenge. Upon its founding, Swissloop Tunneling started to identify the needs of the industry and society for both to be able to really capitalize on new tunneling mechanizms in the future. Thus, with a long-term vision for the product, the team commenced their research and development aims with a design-thinking approach.
INSPIRATION The Swissloop Tunneling founders got inspired by the futuristic concept of Hyperloop that would require hundreds of kilometres of tunnels. Therefore, they realized that it would always need to be considered how to develop a TBM that is highly scalable in terms of use. This should help in contributing to new approaches that could highly benefit society in the long-term future of mobility. At the same time, Elon Musk initiated the ‘Not-a-
Boring Competition’ with his company, The Boring Company, a startup which has set itself the goal to create scalable tunneling solutions for innovative underground transportation systems. This competition framework would enable selected student teams from all over the world to come up with self-developed tunnel boring solutions and compete in different areas, such as innovation, guidance, safety, speed of machine launch, and, most importantly – building tunnels by boring faster than a snail can slither.
Thus, our then newly founded association, named
Swissloop Tunneling, on the one hand knew there are evolving aspirations within the construction industry with the goal to make tunnel construction much faster and more efficient, in general. On the other hand, the Swiss association knew they wanted to take part in the first competition, which was scheduled for 2021, in Las Vegas. The event would enable the team to get in exchanges with other innovation-driven students as well as engineers with long experience from other countries with the same aspirations. However, the first members of Swissloop Tunneling
already knew that they also want to work on a machine that could significantly have positive impact for current construction that is taking place in the underground. Thus, they combined their aspirations for creating an innovative tunneling solution that is beneficial for present infrastructure requirements as well as futuristic concepts such as Hyperloop. Nonetheless, both timeframes require very similar
improvements of TBMs to unleash the potential of more efficient tunneling projects. Swissloop Tunneling decided to focus on the
following: creating a TBM that moves faster and without interruptions, can autonomously dig a tunnel while only being externally controlled, and, in general, is more efficient in terms of financial, material and time resources. Of course, the team of Swiss engineering students
was fully aware of the fact that the tunneling industry already aspires for more efficient machines. The founders’ desire was to contribute to this progress by getting into mutual exchange with various participants of the industry and they wanted to implement new approaches by working as a team – even though it could create moments of great difficulty for the young team of engineering students.
BEGINNINGS After setting its goals, considering what the team sought to achieve with its TBM, and the successful application to take part in the ‘Not-a-Boring Competition’ of 2021, Swissloop Tunneling started to work on its prototype. At the beginning in 2020, the team also knew that it would need more talented people to work within the corresponding R&D framework. In addition, it was crucial to establish partnerships to get the resources and financial means to self-develop such a machine. The founders brought together a team of many
ambitious engineering students from across ETH Zurich and the project directly involved students from various disciplines, including engineering (mechanical, electrical, civil, materials, computer science) and
Above: Graphic of assembled MTBM ‘Groundhog Beta’ IMAGE CREDIT: SWISSLOOP TUNNELING Summer 2024 | 35
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