Engineering the underground.
An ETH Zürich student team designing and building micro tunnel boring machines.
Groundhog Gamma.
8.6 meters long, 60.8 cm across. Designed, machined and assembled by students.
Four subsystems.
One machine.
Each small team of students works on its own subsystem, but in the end, everything needs to come together and work as a whole.
Every part, accounted for.
Built in-house or carefully sourced, every component is modelled and checked before the machine ever goes underground.
Faster, more precise tunnels for the water, power and data lines cities run on.
Founded in 2020, more than 200 students from twelve countries design, manufacture and operate every machine themselves, then take it underground to compete.
Groundhog, in four figures
8.19m
Total length200kN
Propulsion force0.606m
Bore diameter3.1t
Machine weight
Setting up at dusk.Dübendorf · 2025
Three entries. Three podiums.
- 2024Champion AwardGroundhog Beta · Bastrop, Texas
- 2023Innovation AwardGroundhog Beta · Bastrop, Texas
- 2021Innovation & Design AwardGroundhog Alpha · Las Vegas, Nevada
Build somethingreal.
Engineering, software, design or business: you own a subsystem from day one. No tunnelling experience required.
Open positionsAll 8
- Software EngineerSoftware · Build the control, telemetry and operator interfaces that run our tunnel boring machine.
- Navigation Systems & Control EngineerSoftware · Keep a 3.1-tonne machine on a millimetre-accurate course through soil you cannot see.
- Electrical EngineerElectrical · Design the power and signal architecture for a machine that works 50 meters underground.
- Mechanical Design EngineerMechanical · Design load-carrying machine structures that transmit 200 kN and survive Texas.
