Moritz Pill

Most homes in central Europe are still heated with fossil fuels. Especially oil and gas not only pollute the environment but are becoming increasingly scarcer and more expensive. To make the switch to sustainable sources of energy, these need to become more accessible. Geothermal energy is regarded to be one of the most efficient ways of heating. But the conventional method of drilling boreholes for geothermal probes is energy-intensive, expensive, inaccurate, noisy, and causes significant landscape damage, resulting in limited access to geothermal heat for many buildings. Additionally, the carbon footprint of conventional drilling methods is exceedingly high, with up to 1800 liters of diesel or 5 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Our solution: A 2 m by 135 mm earthworm-like tube named Grabowski that is capable of autonomously drilling in the ground. The clue: The entire drilling rig that in conventional drills stays overground and takes up large amounts of space is integrated into the bore hole. This allows our bore-robots to drill in spaces as small as 8 m2 (instead of 50 m2) making drilling in city centers, parking lots or even basements possible. The smaller size also makes our robots very low cost compared to conventional drills. Borobotics GmbH is a spin-off from Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) with office in Winterthur. We are currently 9 people and always looking for bright minds (especially engineers) to strengthen our team further.