Elon Musk launches competition – Huber Technik develops conveyor belts for tunnel construction
Elon Musk, the inventor of the Tesla electric car, wants to use tunnels to relieve large cities of traffic. Driven by this vision, Elon Musk has launched a worldwide competition. The goal is to develop the fastest and most precise tunnel boring machine. Students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) and Munich University of Applied Sciences are taking up this challenge. The Munich-based inventors have already been selected from 400 teams worldwide to take part in the finals in the USA along with eleven other groups. However, driving a tunnel requires not only a highly specialized and technically sophisticated tunnel boring machine, but also the appropriate equipment to transport the material from the earth’s interior to the surface. This is where the company Huber Technik comes into play as a specialist in the construction of special conveyor belts. The students, who have joined forces to form TUM Boring – Innovation in Tunneling e. V., designed a special conveyor system. This was refined to the final version in close cooperation with Huber Technik. In the meantime, the conveyor belts, which are about 60 meters long, have been manufactured. In Musk’s presence, the system will be judged according to various criteria in the summer of 2021 and the winner will be determined.
The Münchner Merkur published an article on this on Wednesday, 14.04.2021. You can find the article here.