TITLE:
Opportunities and Challenges of Robotics and Automation in Offshore Oil & Gas Industry
AUTHORS:
Heping Chen, Samuel Stavinoha, Michael Walker, Biao Zhang, Thomas Fuhlbrigge
KEYWORDS:
Oil & Gas, Robot, Automation, Hazardous Environment, Teleoperation, Offshore Oil & Gas Industry
JOURNAL NAME:
Intelligent Control and Automation,
Vol.5 No.3,
August
1,
2014
ABSTRACT:
The
oil and gas industry will continue to boom in the coming few decades. Obtaining
oil and gas from conventional and non-conventional resources will become more and
more challenging. This intensifying need will impose very considerable demands on
work force, financial and technology capabilities. Since the future supplies of
oil and gas are to expand, advanced technology will become increasingly necessary
to obtain access to more challenging conventional and non-conventional resources.
Therefore oil and gas technologies will be very costly to operate in the coming
future due to hostile, hard-to-reach environments. The offshore oil industry will
become a complicated myriad of advanced equipment, structures, and work force. Our
objectives are to identify potential applications and research directions of robotics
and automation in the oil & gas field and explore the obstacles and challenges
of robotic and automation applications to this area. This study performs the necessary
survey and investigation about the work conditions of robotics and automation equipment
in the oil and gas industry, especially offshore oil rigs. The oil & gas industry
processes are first investigated. The personals and tasks are then explored. Furthermore,
this paper reviews the current robotic automation technology. The challenges and
requirements are identified for robotics and automation equipment in the oil and
gas industry. The requirements of robotics and automation in the oil & gas industry
are presented. Future research opportunities are discussed from a technical perspective.