Four-legged robots on the march to cut dangerous jobs – and costs – on North Sea rigs
Alison Campsie reports on ground-breaking work by Edinburgh University, which has attracted millions of pounds in funding
Robots will be sent to work on North Sea oil and gas platforms as part of a £36.5 million project to cut the number of people employed in the world’s most extreme environments.
The Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, based at Edinburgh University, is leading the development of the four-legged robots, which will be able to navigate an offshore installation and carry out assessments, maintenance and some tasks.
The robots, largely controlled from offices on land, are being devised by the Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (Orca) programme.
Professor Sethu Vijayakumar, director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, run in collaboration with Heriot Watt University, said the offshore robots would reduce jobs in the North Sea, address a recruitment shortage in oil and gas and make oil production more economically viable given competition from low-cost operations in the Middle East.
He said: “The Orca hub is specifically looking at the extreme environment of the North Sea. We want to take people out of this very harsh environment and give them better working conditions. We are also finding a shortage of people who are willing to work in these conditions. The pay is reasonable but it is proving more difficult to get the right skill set of people who are willing to spend six weeks away from their family.
“To make our oil and gas industry competitive with the rest of the world, we need this programme.”
The Orca programme is part of a broader UK government drive to deploy robotics in extreme environments which can also include disaster zones, nuclear radiation stores, underground mines, deep space and deep water.
The North Sea oil and gas industry has already ventured into robotics. Among innovations are drones being used to carry out maintenance inspections and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) doing basic pipeline and cable checks.
Prof Vijayakumar said: “What we are trying to do is go towards a more holistic solution that combines many kinds of robots – from robots that swim to robots that fly, to quadrupeds that can climb steps and navigate slippery surfaces and rugged terrains.”
The robot will be developed to sense obstacles, such as puddles, and react to mishaps, such as slips and falls. The Orca programme, a collaboration with Heriot-watt University, Imperial College London, Oxford University and Liverpool University, has attracted funding of more than £18m from industry and a further £14m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
It has already conducted an underwater trial near Fort William with more testing due later this month at a fire college near Oxford, where the physical environment of an oil rig can be partly replicated.
Sections of a model oil rig have also be constructed at the Bayse Centre for data science and artificial intelligence at Edinburgh University.
Prof Vijayakumar said he did not envisage a time when rigs were run solely by robots and that maintenance teams would likely remain offshore to maintain and manage the equipment.
He added: “Humans are still very good at contextual decision making using prior knowledge. What we are looking at is a collaboration between robots and humans with robots to be used more like a tool.
“This isn’t about replacing jobs – it is about using technology to make working conditions much more attractive and making production economically viable.
“The industry will cease to exist if we don’t bring in the technology.”