This year marks the fifth 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 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. The university teams freely shared lessons learned, which more rapidly advances the science of drilling automation. Everyone involved claims to have had a lot of fun while learning things that are not in the textbooks. Students also participated in related events at conferences and workshops meeting and networking with industry leaders in drilling automation. This year’s contest promises to be just as challenging and hopefully more fun.
How did the competition first come about?
The origins began in 2008 when a number of SPE members established the Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS) to help accelerate the uptake of automation in the drilling industry. DSATS’ goal was to link the surface machines with downhole machines, tools and measurements in drilling systems automation (DSA), thereby improving drilling safety and efficiency. Later, at an SPE Forum in Paris, the idea of a student competition began to take shape. A DSATS sub-committee was formed to further develop the competition format and guidelines. Several universities were polled to find out the ability of academic institutions to create and manage multi-disciplinary teams. The Drillbotics committee began small in 2014-2015 to see if the format could succeed. With fine tuning, we continue along those lines as we start the 2018 process.
Please complete the form below to apply for the 2019 Competition. The deadline is November 30, 2018.
