Oil and its by-products are among the most highly demanded commodities across the world. Oil drilling, which was initially done on land, has also migrated to offshore deep-ocean drilling.
Offshore oil drilling is labour intensive and workers spend long hours in an anchored ship or an offshore oil platform. The industry has been facing severe labour shortages because of the inherent difficulty, danger, and risk involved in this work. Also, the need for novel drilling equipment is rising in order to make the operation quicker to meet growing oil needs. At the same time there is an increased consciousness concerning the safety of oil drilling operators in their working environment.
In order to accommodate these unmet needs in offshore drilling, scientists at the Norway-based Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research (SINTEF) have developed a robot-operated offshore oil and gas platform. A robot equipped with inspection cameras, giant drills, measuring devices and many other tools helps to run and maintain the rig.
The project is envisioned to be deployed in the year 2015. Research has proven that an array of remotely-controlled robot arms, employing collision avoidance software, can reduce the human risk and overall cost involved in oil drilling.
The oil drilling robots will be controlled from land. Hence the petroleum operators will never be in close contact with these robots. Oslo-based Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, has been funding the construction of NOK laboratory. Covering an area of 30 m², the lab is constructed in the basement of Electro building at the SINTEF campus. The robot arm is pre-programmed and is operated offshore using a control panel stationed at the NOK lab.
The research is also inclined toward fully automating the oil drilling platforms. Such an automated platform would not require the deployment of fire systems, catering, sound insulation, and other human-specific facilities and safety measures. Thus, the overall maintenance cost would be drastically reduced. There would only be robots working instead of human-beings. Of course, there need to be effective sensors and control programs to bring the robot operations within control and also help them avoid collisions.
A remote controlled robot would be able to search, do inspection, make measurements, and also take photographs of the oil platform. Since the robots entirely take over the role of human-beings at the offshore oil drilling platforms, there needs to be more insight into effectively controlling robot movements and avoiding possible accidents. When a robot does a pick and place operation, there needs to be a tight and slip-free contact between the robotic manipulator and the object. Thus grippers embedded with force sensors need to be designed with utmost safety consciousness.
Collision avoidance is an important design aspect where the robots should ensure accident-free movements and manipulation. This problem has been solved mathematically by constructing 3D models of each robot and its positioning, accompanied by distance calculation between adjacent robots and other objects or equipment in the manipulation environment.
A group of 15 to 20 scientists at the Gemini Centre for Advanced Robotics at the Department of Technical Cybernetics at SINTEF has been actively involved in this research. Once proven successful, such offshore robots could go a long way in assisting human-beings perform hassle-free drilling operations.
For more information on Frost & Sullivan's technical and market analysis contact Patrick Cairns, Frost & Sullivan, +27 (0)21 680 3274, [email protected], www.frost.com
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