BLACKSBURG, Va., April 23 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
Dig or die.
That fierce motto carried members of the student design team the Diggeridoos to a first-place finish in the 2026 Not-a-Boring Competition, a challenge to build a machine that can dig underground tunnels effectively and inexpensively. The machine they designed dug through 10 feet, 9 inches of dirt at the competition, beating out other university teams from around the world.
It took six years of attempts, thousands of hours of work, and many failures to achieve this hard-fought victory, according to co-project lead Chris Johnston, a senior in mechanical engineering. "We like to call it 'lunch pail engineering,'" h...