Drillbotics - Student Competition

Since 2017, a team of three to five students from Clausthal University of Technology has been participating in the international Drillbotics® competition. The goal of the competition is to design, build, and improve small-scale automated drilling systems. The active team members are students from various disciplines and fields of study.

For several years now, the trend in the drilling industry has been toward the automation of drilling rigs and processes. The development and implementation of algorithms to optimize many processes plays a key role in improving the safety and effectiveness of drilling operations. In particular, the filtering and interpretation of data generated above and below ground for the adaptation of drilling processes presents a major challenge. The competition’s tasks are based on these complex issues, for which the students must develop approaches and solutions during the competition period.

The Drillbotics® competition consists of two phases: a theoretical phase and a practical phase. In the theoretical phase, concepts are developed on how to approach and accomplish the task statement published by the organizer, the SPE Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS). The concepts are critically described and evaluated in a report. The reports from the individual teams are evaluated by the organizer, and the top teams advance to the practical phase, where the ideas are implemented. In the final evaluation, the implementation and complexity of the described concepts are assessed, but safety aspects also play a major role here.

In 2017 and 2018, the focus of the challenge was on handling high mechanical loads on the drill string. Here, an inhomogeneous rock mass had to be drilled through vertically as quickly as possible. In 2019, a new system was developed and built with the goal of performing automatically controlled, deflected drilling to hit a predefined target within the rock mass.

The theoretical phase of the Drillbotics® competition begins every year in early October. To ensure we can continue to compete successfully in the coming years, we are seeking additional members from various academic disciplines. Are you interested in the development and implementation of new technologies? Would you like to compete against participants from different countries and nationalities? Then please feel free to contact us.

The implementation of the concepts is financially supported by the sponsors Wintershall DEA GmbH and ITE GmbH.