Drillbotics - Student Competition

Since 2017, a team of Clausthal University of Technology is participating in the Drillbotics® Student Competition. The team consists of three to five students from variety of disciplines, who are constructing, building and improving autonomous small scale drilling rigs.

The trend in the sector of drilling operations is towards full-automated drilling processes with algorithms, which should increase drilling efficiency by evaluation of a great amount of data. Especially the filtering and interpreting of the data, which are provided by many over- and undersurface sensors, are one of the most important challenges for research institutions and industry. The participants of Drillbotics® competition have to face these challenges every year during preparation for the contest.

The contest consist out of two phases - a theoretical and a practical phase. In the theoretical phase, a concept has to be developed, how to solve the tasks given by the organizer SPE Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section (DSATS). The report will be rated and the best teams will reach the second phase, where the ideas will be putted into practice. For the final ranking the realisation of the concept, the complexity and safety issues are decisive.

In 2017 and 2018 was the focus set on dealing with drill string mechanics during drilling a vertical well through different layers. In 2019, a new facility was build, which had to drill autonomously a deviated well to reach a given target.

The Wintershall DEA GmbH and the ITE GmbH thankfully sponsored the financial resources for the realisation and improvement of the facilities.

The competition starts in the first phase every year at the beginning of October. In order to ensure successful participation, we need Team members from all areas of engineering science. Are you interested in the development of new technologies, from the idea to the technical implementation? Would you like to compete with other students from international universities? Then feel free to contact us.