The U.S. military needs tunneling robots, NASA needs tunneling robots, public works departments need tunneling robots, FEMA needs tunneling robots and so does law enforcement, FBI, Border Patrol, DEA, DHS and The ATF. But, how come no one has ever made a good, reliable, self-contained and state-of-the-art tunneling robot?

It seems with all the robotics competitions going on that someone would have designed and built a good tunneling robot by now. This subject recently came up in an online think tank and one member started asking questions;