SPE DSATS will host a free webinar at 08:30 Central Standard Time on Wednesday 26 October 2016. Fred Florence, chair of the Drillbotics(TM) sub-committee of the Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section, will present. Details and registration information is available at https://webevents.spe.org/products/drillbotics. This would be a good time for the 2017 student teams to ask any questions they may have about the current competition. For operators, contractors, service providers and manufacturers involved in drilling automation, this is an opportunity to see how much in-depth experience today’s graduating students are getting from this project.Here is a brief summary of the webinar content:The current state of the drilling industry tends to focus on technology and techniques that reduce the cost of well construction. One approach is to use drilling automation to help improve ROP, and perhaps more importantly, to mitigate drilling dysfunctions and human errors than can lead to large, unplanned expenses. SPE’s Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS) created an international university competition to encourage the development of new drilling algorithms and to get more young people involved in drilling. The students must design, build and operate a small (6 ft / 2 m) drilling rig with fully automated sensors and controls. They drill a specially created, multi-layered rock sample as fast and as straight as possible, with only two buttons: start and stop. The schools must offer a multidisciplinary team that will learn things that are not in today’s textbooks. The winning team receives travel expenses to present their results at the next Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. This webinar describes the contest, what skill sets are necessary to successfully compete and what types of innovative features are likely to emerge from this exciting competition.
