21/12/2025
📆🎆 2025 is coming to an end – and with this, we are looking back on a year packed with changes that drove the progress of our innovation-driven project Swissloop Tunneling 🚀
Pausing the participation at the Not-a-Boring Competition in the US this year enabled us to invest the increased time capacity and operational resources in the further development of our tunnel boring machine Groundhog Gamma. Without the usual logistical disruption of international machine transport to the competition site abroad, we were also able to invest more effectively in the ongoing training of our talented team members who gain hands-on experience alongside their studies 🎓👷📚🔧
Relocating from our previous workshop at Empa in Dübendorf to the
Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich this summer, our engineers successfully organized their new workplace and continued their work on Groundhog Gamma. After the implementation of conceptual changes for our machine, initial tests were successfully carried out:
--> We successfully excavated over 10 meters of tunnels in total, with the longest single tunnel exceeding 4 meters, completed continuously without any interruptions. This demonstrates the performance improvements made possible by our newly enhanced soil excavation system.
--> The liner system was tested in isolation, allowing us to gain valuable insights and apply targeted improvements. These enhancements proved successful, particularly in terms of reliability and ease of maintenance. In total, we produced over 20 meters of extruded pipes, with the longest continuous section exceeding 2 meters !
--> Groundhog Gamma and its supporting infrastructure have been equipped with the most extensive sensor setup ever implemented on a Swissloop Tunneling machine. This marks a major step forward in our vision of delivering autonomous solutions for underground infrastructure construction. All newly implemented sensors are fully integrated and managed through centralized controllers, making the system more autonomous than ever before.
✨ We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who supported our project this year, and we are looking forward to our future collaboration ! 🤝
