Drillbotics® is an international competition for universities to design and build a small drilling rig that uses sensors and control algorithms to autonomously drill a rock sample provided by SPE’s Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS). Recently, teams may choose to model a full scale drilling rig.
2023-2024 marks the tenth competition for the title of Drillbotics® champion and a chance for sponsored travel to present a paper at the next SPE/IADC Drilling Conference. The past years involved undergraduates, masters and doctoral students from a variety of disciplines who built innovative drilling machines and downhole tools or directional drilling models while developing a deeper understanding of automating the drilling process. Everyone involved claims to have had a lot of fun while learning things that are not in the textbooks. This year’s contest promises to be more challenging and hopefully more fun.
SPE and DSATS
The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is the largest individual-member organization serving managers, engineers, scientists and other professionals worldwide in the upstream segment of the oil and gas industry. Most recently, membership totaled more than 153,000 individuals from 143 countries including almost 70,000 students serving in 411 student chapters. Please visit the About Us page on the SPE website for further background information.
DSATS is a technical section of SPE organized to promote the adoption of automation techniques using surface and downhole machines and instrumentation to improve the safety and efficiency of the drilling process. More information is available about DSATS at the DSATS homepage.
