2024 Guidelines/Application Form

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 and possibly at an event organized by DSATS. The past years involved undergraduates, masters and doctoral students from a variety of disciplines who built innovative drilling machines and downhole tools while developing a deeper understanding of automating the drilling process.  In 2021 and 2022 teams also created models to simulate drilling from a full-sized rig.  In 2023 we introduced a well control option for the virtual rigs.

Again, this year, there are two categories:  Group A will not require any rig construction; it requires a model of a full scale rig, the well, and a directional drilling technique.  Group B will build and operate a physical rig.  For Group A, teams have two options: they may continue to model the rig and the directional drilling process to virtually drill a 3D directional well similar to last year’s contest.  They have an option to use their rig model to interface with a well control model provided by Norce using the OpenLab app and following the D-WIS interface methodology.  Group B will use their physical rig to drill a 2D directional well or an optional 3D well.

We hope to hold in-person contests next spring if health conditions allow, but teams should be prepared for virtual or hybrid options.

You can download the 2023-2024 Guidelines below.  As always, please NOTE: Updates will be posted on the Drillbotics.com FAQs and blog, and it is the responsibility of each team to keep up to date, as these Guidelines and the FAQs and Blog become an amendment to the Guidelines and are the official rules of the competition. Teams are encouraged to enroll to receive notification of news alerts for the latest posts and news alerts.  Sign up here for news alerts by filling in the form at the bottom of any page.

Competition Documents

Please click below to access 2023-2024 and previous Guidelines.  Team must register before 15 October by completing the form using this link.