The project partners
TUM BORING – INNOVATION IN TUNNELING E.V.
is a student association at the Technical University of Munich in cooperation with Munich University of Applied Sciences. The association has no financial resources of its own. The necessary hardware and software is provided by various companies.
The students are participating in the “NOT-a-Boring Competition” for tunnel boring machines in the USA. For this purpose, they are building a tunnel boring machine based on their own design.
“NOT-a-Boring Competition” is a competition organized by the ‘Boring Company’, which has been held annually since 2021. The aim is to promote innovation in tunnel construction and optimize costs.
Project Description
The requirements by TUM BORING
- Development of an innovative tunnel boring machine
- No proprietary systems
- Control of a wide variety of machine components with a single manufacturer-independent system: drives, hydraulics, sensors, power supply, monitoring, visualization
Not-a-boring Competition
- There is currently extensive research into the means of transport of the future. The public focus is primarily on air transport, e.g. with air taxis.
- The Not-a-Boring Competition, on the other hand, concentrates on tunnel drilling. The idea is, for example, to create underground transport systems for large cities to prevent traffic gridlock.
- The specific goal of the competition is to drill a 30-meter-long tunnel with a diameter of 50 cm in the shortest possible time.
The solution with CODESYS
- As an industrial partner of TUM Boring, we provide software and expertise.
- The program that controls and regulates motion, feed, extraction, and many other machine components is written in the CODESYS Development System.
- CODESYS Visu is used to program low-threshold control interfaces.
- Thanks to the real-time data collected, the machine can be controlled with precision.
- All data for evaluating and optimizing machine performance is exported directly from CODESYS and processed.
Benefits thanks to CODESYS
With CODESYS, TUM BORING was able to achieve maximum independence from device manufacturers. CODESYS is device-independent by design and consistently follows global standards. This enabled TUM Boring to implement the entire machine control system, including monitoring, without having to familiarize itself with various different systems.
CODESYS products used
“CAN bus, Ethernet/IP, IO-Link – we were able to integrate all of our communication protocols via CODESYS! And totally independent of the hardware we use. That made our work so much easier.”
Sulejman Biscevic, Team Leader Control
And how did the Not-a-Boring Competition 2025 turn out?
The TUM Boring team triumphed once again! With a record length of 22.5 meters, the Munich-based team holds the distance record and prevailed against global competition. CODESYS extends its heartfelt congratulations and is proud to be part of the project.