Drillbotics® team members sometimes struggle understanding the role of Human Factors in automation. This article may help explain some of the issues and how the drilling industry is dealing with this. Some key takeaways are:
- Systems are never fully autonomous. People need to be able to interact with automated systems and oversee their performance.
- The human is still responsible for manual tasks in addition to interfacing with the automation system and trying to figure out when he or she needs to step in when the automation system asks for help.
- In addition to the whole drilling process, you now need training and competency in the automation system itself.
- What we really have to do is look at the integrated whole and look at the job they’re doing where automation is a part of that with all of the information, all the systems that they’re managing, and say, ‘How do we approach this holistically so that the entire system makes sense?
Teams should consider these elements in their Design Reports and Phase II Presentations.
