A Swarm of Robots Built This Tunnel

tunnels are everywhere whether you pass through one on foot in a car on a train or even on a cruise ship there's a few different ways they can be built we still rely on techniques that were pioneered centuries ago and even those fancy machines used on the biggest projects have been around for decades but this new take on tunneling is unlike anything we've seen before because all the work is carried out by swarms of robots yes really and it actually works and that's not all 3D printing autonomous vehicles digital twins it's a system that's about as high-tech as you can get and there are some big Partnerships already in place this is how you dig a tunnel in a way that's far from boring right so before we go all futuristic on you let's recap on some of the ways we build tunnels in today's world one option is drill and blast which has been around since the 19th century as some of our brightest viewers might have already guessed from the name it involves the use of drilling machines and controlled explosives to Carver path through what is usually very hard rock you might also adopt this approach if you only have a short tunnel to dig or you're on a bit of a budget but if you need to make a longer hole the ground is more forgiving and you've got money to spend you could invest in one of these a tunnel boring machine or TBM often weighing thousands of tons TPMS use a giant cutting head to carve their way through the ground and a system that sends loose soil back the other way and out of the tunnel it's the chosen method for many large infrastructure projects from High-Speed Rail lines to major highways then there's the cut and cover procedure for building shallower tunnels the immersed tube method for crossing deep water basically there are lots of ways to make a tunnel but they're all quite time consuming and with some exceptions perhaps don't make the most of modern tech but that's all about change yes a completely new approach to tile construction has been revealed that's tearing up the rule book instead of one big machine it employs swarms of tiny robots to do the work before we get into it here's a quick word from today's video sponsor Masterworks tunnel digging isn't the only sector in need of innovation stock futures look Grim right now and entire Industries and individual investors are feeling the pressure the bank of England expects the coming recession to be its longest ever and the traditional stock heavy portfolio is already having its worst year since 1936. so investors are looking to Alternatives that aren't necessarily correlated to the stock markets like Fine Arts take what's happened in 2022 even though markets are down Morgan Stanley reports the average piece of art is selling for 26 more at auction than last year and thanks to Masterworks you too can invest in legendary pieces of art at a fraction of the costs Masterworks qualifies all their paintings with the SEC which you can view on their website or Linked In the description this process allows you to invest in shares of their Arts if they sell it for a profits you get a cut in Masterworks last three sales investors have gotten returns of more than 13 nearly 600 000 people have signed up for Masterworks to dates and they're launching new paintings weekly to keep up with demand you can get priority access to the new offerings when you sign up at the link in the description now let's get back to the video now you already have an idea in your head about how this robot tunnel works but you'd probably be wrong actually you dig a hole and then build the tunnel as quickly as you can behind your excavation process took to hold that Tunnel open what we do is we actually build the tunnel in the ground first and then empty it afterwards so it's literally turning the process on its head confused well we'll break it down for you the process starts by drilling holes in the middle of the target area and around the spot where you want to build which are filled with special bore pipes samples of the soil are used to create a digital twin which is like a virtual blueprint of the structure packed with data that's then fed to the army of robots once this is done the robots are placed inside the pipes where they begin constructing the shell of the tunnel they do this first by drilling a number of access points along the length of the pipe these are used to inject a kind of composite material into the Earth which hardens to make segments of the tunnel lining tiny robotic cutting arms then carve chamber is between these areas of material which are filled with more of it creating a continuous structure we actually put very small amounts in like 3D printing so that we build up a structure with lots of small amounts you build the structure up using the geology to support the build so you know we can put our building blocks if you like anywhere we like within the geology because it will stay there and then you gradually fill in the gaps because the robots can pass each other inside the pipes you can have many of them working all at once and we really are talking about an actual swarm of robots here we have absolutely no problem putting up to five thousand or ten thousand of these robots into a system now that's five or even ten thousand cubic meters of material built every 24 hours there's absolutely no way that can be achieved other than by a swarming process once the structure is complete drills are brought back in to disrupt the soil which is then removed by autonomous vehicles leaving behind a ready-made tunnel then other than a bit of final preparation to the walls and of course the laying of the road or rail line the tunnel is ready to go and those ball pipes can even be reused for maintenance this could enable tunnels to be built up to 10 times faster and half the cost of conventional methods and because humans don't need to go inside at all until everything's finished it's much safer too it's a process that's not just limited to tunnels either the companies deemed it suitable for all kinds of underground structures think Metro stations mining facilities or evil lairs this might all sound years away from happening but a full-scale demo has already been done in October 2022 hyper tunnel unveiled Peak 15. its first structure built entirely by those robots constructed at its UK r d facility yes it was only six meters long two meters high and two meters wide making it just about big enough for pedestrians only a few robots were used rather than thousands it was technically built above rather than below grounds and the results were a little rougher than in those fancy renderings but it showed that the basics of the approach do work and with a little more fine-tuning it could be ready to go for real in the not too distant future what's also interesting is who it was built for Network rail which owns and manages most of the UK's rail network it's responsible for maintaining tunnels all over the country including hundreds that were constructed over a century ago many of these now need to be repaired or enlarged and network rail has been looking for new ways of doing this that are safer and less disruptive after the project finished Network rails had that Peak 15 moves us a step closer to that goal so it's being taken seriously there's clearly a lot of potential with this Tech and Steve thinks we might start seeing similar Innovations in other areas of construction pretty soon by the end of this decade I believe that Underground Construction will be dominated by swarm robotics now I expect us to have a very large part of that of course and I think it will be on be even beyond what we can imagine today whether hyper tunnel can really go from this to this and how long that will take are questions that can't be answered yet but the company is definitely on an exciting path and it seems to have some light at the end of its r d tunnel this video is made possible by Masterworks you can skip their Queue at the link below there's also the chance to dive deeper on this and the other topics on our Channel over on the world's best construction podcasts available now wherever you get your podcasts and as always if you liked this video and you want to learn more about where construction is headed make sure you're subscribed to tomorrow's build [Music]

Channel: Tomorrow's Build

Views: 389,652

Keywords: construction, architecture, engineering, Tomorrow's Build, tomorrowsbuild, TomorrowsBuild, tomorrows build, B1M, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, future, tunnels, technology, tunnel building, robots, tbm, tunnel boring machine, underwater tunnel, trains, railway, hypertunnel, drones, national rail, trainspotting

Id: bfJY0syocfU

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022