Swissloop drilling robot will be put to the test in the USA

SpaceX founder Elon Musk aims to promote new technology for passenger and freight transportation through the Hyperloop project. He envisages a transport system of pods with a top speed of 1,200 km/hour through a vacuum tube. In this context, Hyperloop competitions are regularly held to offer students a chance to showcase their different developments.

The next competition is the Not-A-Boring Competition in Las Vegas this September. Here, high-tech drilling robots that can be used for tunnel boring in future will be presented. The Swissloop Tunneling team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) will be competing with its robot.

Swissloop is a student-led initiative. It has previously developed transport pods for other Hyperloop competitions. Under the name Swissloop Tunneling, this team has also been working on a drilling robot for the upcoming competition since 2020. Swissloop Tunneling is made up of former members of the Swissloop team.

The goal of the Not-A-Boring-Competition is to beat “Gary the snail”, as Swissloop Tunneling explained in a press release. Gary is the reference for the top speed of a snail, which is 1 cm per second.

As the logistics company Gebrüder Weiss explained in a press release, it will offer Swissloop Tunneling a sponsored land and sea transport. The Swissloop Tunneling team’s robot will be transported from Dübendorf in Switzerland to Las Vegas.