2025-2026 Drillbotics is proudly sponsored by:
The Drillbotics Committee is proud to announce the results of the 2026 Drillbotics competition.
This year’s teams took on challenges in designing, building, testing, and demonstrating autonomous drilling systems under real technical, operational, and safety constraints. Across both the physical and virtual tracks, the judges were struck by the effort, creativity, and persistence on display, especially by how much these teams accomplished under pressure. The pace and delivery quality of teams have also been noted to accelerate.
Physical Mode
1st place
Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Argentina.
In its very first year of competition, ITBA built a working drilling rig from the ground up and earned first place in Physical Mode. The team paired a functional rig with thorough safety preparation, clear technical communication, and tight coordination throughout the demonstration. Judges singled out ITBA’s rapid progress, professional execution, team management, local support network, and ability to diagnose and resolve issues in real-time during the demonstration.
Joint 2nd place
– Clausthal University of Technology (TU Clausthal), Germany,
– Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway.
TU Clausthal and NTNU share second place in Physical Mode. Both teams delivered substantial technical work and demonstrated the depth of development required to sustain a complex autonomous drilling system. The committee was impressed by the integration efforts and continued improvements of their systems, and thanks them for the hundreds of engineering hours that went into their systems and demonstrations.
Virtual Mode
1st place
Palawan State University – PalSU/ Sunway University collaboration, Philippines/Malaysia
The PalSU/Sunway collaboration took first place in Virtual Mode with a focus on well control and kick detection built on OpenLab integration. The team stood out during the presentation and a blind surprise test, returning not only accurate kick detection but also a recommended response.
Runner-up
– UMaT Well Control
UMaT Well Control earned runner-up honors in Virtual Mode, demonstrating OpenLab interoperability and a working prototype that ingested live simulator data during the competition.
Conference Paper
The committee has invited ITBA to prepare the 2026 Drillbotics conference paper and present this year’s winning work at the upcoming SPE Drilling conference on 9–11 March 2027 in Stavanger, Norway.
Looking Ahead
The 2027 Drillbotics rules will be published later this year, with notable changes expected. Teams considering the next cycle should keep an eye on the Drillbotics website and guidelines page for updates.
Congratulations to every participating team, and our thanks to the judges, faculty advisors, volunteers, sponsors, and industry supporters who make Drillbotics possible!
— The Drillbotics Committee
Acknowledgements
The Drillbotics Committee thanks the judges, reviewers, sponsors, faculty advisors, volunteers, and industry supporters who made the 2025-2026 cycle possible. Special thanks to the review committee, including Curtis Cheatham, Blakley Farrow, Andre Fernandes, Fred Florence, Rong Lu, Nestor Ruiz, Harry Soilemezidis, Shashi Talya, Narendra Vishnumolakala, Shang Zhang, Eric Cayeux, and Enrique Losoya for reviewing submissions, joining finalist discussions, and providing feedback to the teams.
We also thank John de Wardt, Rium Johnson, Sarah Kern, Cody MacDonald, Jessica Corenchuk and the IPT team, William Fox, Stacie Ehler, Greg Hickey, Sam Dharmaselvan, Alex Ngan, Dimitrios Pirovolou, Freeman, and the broader DSATS/SPE support network for helping with program support, sponsorship, communications, video, web, platform access, and planning for future cycles.
