Good news! The program committee of the SPE/IADC Drilling Conference has awarded the Drillbotics program a permanent slot at one of the drilling sessions at this renowned international conference. Also, SPE has offered a booth for the winning team to exhibit their rig during the conference. The DSATS committee reluctantly withdrew the abstract to the 2016 ATCE since SPE rules forbid publication of previously submitted work.
There will be an opportunity at the DSATS Symposium on 8 October 2016 for presentations by several university teams, but the paper by the winning team will be presented in the spring of 2018 at the Drilling Conference. There is no change to the agreed schedule for the 2016 tests at each university. Next year, the Phase I deadline will be unchanged, with the design reports due on 31 December 2016. Phase II testing will still be May and June, but there is not as much of a rush to write the paper following the on-site tests. Congratulations to the student teams who previously submitted quality papers that bolstered confidence in the program and led to such a generous offer by the program committee. Thanks to John Thorogood, John deWardt, Blaine Dow and others within the DSATS organization who worked to make this happen.
