Events

Seminar Title:

"Overcoming Barriers to Drilling Automation: The Data Integration and Data Quality Challenge"

Abstract:

There has been a growing interest in drilling automation in the recent decade. The recent drop in oil price has made the need for automation all the more relevant. Many drilling tasks have been successfully automated and pilot technologies have been deployed, However broader adoption has remained slow.

In this presentation we will explore the many reasons why drilling automation has been slow to be adopted. We will explore the various challenges, and the research being done at UT Austin to overcome these challenges. Though the focus of the presentation will be on data quality and data integration issues as they pertain to drilling automation, other closely related drilling automation challenges will be introduced as well.

Biography:

Pradeep Ashok received his Ph.D. degree (2007) in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation, he was the program manager and later chief scientist of the Robotics Research Group at U.T. Austin. During this time, he managed projects funded by ONR, NASA, DARPA, John Deere, Union Pacific and Intuitive Surgical. He has authored more than 10 journal/conference publications in the areas of decision making theory and sensor data fusion and authored more than 20 technical reports in the areas of actuator design and actuator intelligence. He is a co-inventor on many patents that relate to decision making and automation. He is currently an associate director in the Rig Automation and Performance Improvement in Drilling (RAPID) group in the petroleum engineering department at UT Austin.