{"id":309,"date":"2021-10-13T14:17:30","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T21:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/learn-lab\/?p=309"},"modified":"2022-08-09T06:10:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T13:10:10","slug":"and-the-winner-of-elon-musks-not-a-boring-competition-is-tum-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/learn-lab\/2021\/10\/13\/and-the-winner-of-elon-musks-not-a-boring-competition-is-tum-boring\/","title":{"rendered":"Not-a-Boring Competition Winner TUM Boring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Elon Musk tweets about traffic inefficiencies, people listen\u2014including a team of 60 highly motivated students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Their team, called TUM Boring, are creating the world\u2019s fastest tunnel boring machine, a step toward disrupting the future of transportation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in 2016 by Elon Musk, The Boring Company<\/a>\u2019s mission is to solve today\u2019s most pressing transportation problems by creating “boring tunnels” using advanced drilling techniques. This has inspired designers and engineers around the world, throwing down a gauntlet: the Not-a-Boring Competition<\/a>, which challenges teams to come up with innovative tunneling solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TUM Boring from Munich became the team to watch. Building momentum, the TUM Boring team were selected as one of 12 finalists from more than 400 teams worldwide to compete in the Not-a-Boring Competition. This put them in the top 3% of competitors worldwide, tasked with boring a tunnel as quickly and accurately as possible. In September, the TUM Boring team\u2019s technology\u2014focused on speed, automation design, and sustainability\u2014blew their competitors out of the water, winning the competition in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TUM Boring team is anything but boring\u2014collectively and as individuals. Haokun Zheng, one of five leads largely responsible for project operations, is a 20-year-old student beginning the third and final year of his bachelor\u2019s degree in computer science, specializing in informatics. Here, he shares the team\u2019s accomplishments, their experience engineering the boring machine, and what lies ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TUM<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How did you first get involved in the Not-a-Boring competition?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our university has a rich history with Elon Musk\u2019s competitions. We were able to win four out of four SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competitions beforehand. With those previous successes, it was relatively easy to find enough motivated people once the new Not-a-Boring Competition was announced. We started as a small group of roughly 10 students in July 2020. After determining that we wanted to participate in this competition, we expanded our team through a recruiting phase to over 60 members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That puts you in the top echelon of competitors worldwide, which is very impressive. <\/strong>What did it mean to you and your team to win the competition?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Having worked on the machine and this tunnel boring project for around 60\u201380 hours a week for over a year as a team of 60 students, everyone was overjoyed when learning about the win. We were relieved to know that all the hard work was worth it. Throughout the last year, we have been repeatedly told by industry experts that the timeline we were aiming for was borderline impossible to adhere to and it was not straightforward to secure funding and corporate sponsors during a global pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having overcome these obstacles and maintained our focus on winning has created a sense of profound accomplishment. Seeing our machine working and in action also filled us with a lot of pride. After having spent the last year designing, manufacturing, and assembling our 40-foot long and 22-ton heavy machine, we were very excited when it was lifted off the truck and lowered into its final position for the all-deciding tunneling run. To be able to build such a massive and complex machine as a team of students is not an opportunity that one encounters every day. We all cherish this unique opportunity and the time we have spent together as a team working on this project.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n