3. Robot OperatorsIntroduction:The oil and gas industry will be a boom in the coming few decades. Obtaining oil and gas from conventional and unconventional resources will become more and more challenging. This need will impose very considerable demands on work force, financial aspects and technological 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 unconventional resources. Therefore oil and gas technologies will be very costly to operate in the coming future due to hostile environments. The offshore oil industry will become a complicated myriad of advanced equipment, structures, and work force. Our objective is to identify potential applications and research directions of robotics and automation in the oil & gas field and explore the obstacles and challenges of robotic applications in this area.Challenges in Offshore Exploration:The deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the frigid regions of Russia, and the hot & dusty deserts of the Middle East are merely the geographic challenges facing todays oil and gas exploration and production industry. The work conditions on offshore installations are the first thing to look at when analyzing the environments.The most important ones are as follows: Atmosphere: The atmospheric conditions on offshore platforms are quite unfriendly. Due to the substances used and generated during the processing of hydro carbon resources, the following types of gases can occur. They are explosive, toxic and corrosive. Heavy weather: Wind with high speed and squalls, rain, hail and snow. All these weather conditions occur more often in offshore than in onshore. Extreme ambient temperature: Depending on the region the platform is located there can be extreme high and low temperatures. Humidity is also ranging from lower values to condensing values. Logistical issues: It is highly expensive to have people working on the rig as they must be housed and protected. Further, in the case of emergency, it must be possible to evacuate personnel quickly.As oil and gas exploration pushes into more hostile and remote regions, these difficulties become serious obstacles to the financial viability of an offshore exploration and installations.Researchers are developing robots to operate offshore oil & gas platforms. A lot of things have to be kept in mind, when the human actions are replaced by robot movements. Sensors are one aspect of this. Another is the matter of operations that involve contact & movement, such as when a robot has to pick up something from the floor, contact operations are a particular challenge because the robot is very strong and it can easily destroy the equipment with which it comes into contact, unless we keep its strength fully under control. The robot is similar to a computer, it does exactly what it is told. Unlike a human being, it will not move aside if it collides with something else.The following are the Robotic Techniques that are used in the Offshore Exploration:

Remotely operated underwater vehicles:As the search for oil and natural gas resources moves into deeper and deeper water, companies are facing increasing operating and maintenance costs. Building and installing a single offshore drilling platform now costs more than a billion dollars, so companies are using their platforms as efficiently as possible. Advances in the technology have enabled them to service several oil & gas fields from a single platform, and much of the infrastructure for well operations has moved to the seafloor from the platform, which may be as much as 4,000 meters below the surface. As a result, inspecting, servicing, and repairing underwater pipelines and equipment has become an ever greater challenge. Therefore, most of the companies are using different robotic techniques for efficiency in the exploration..A remotely operated vehicle is an unoccupied underwater robot that is connected to a ship by a series of cables. These cables can transmit the command and control signals between the operator and the ROV. An ROV includes a video camera, lights, sonar systems, and an articulating arm, which is used for retrieving small objects, cutting lines, or attaching lifting hooks to larger objects.The ROV is an inspection class vehicle equipped with a forward looking high resolution video camera. There are two fixed focus low light cameras that can be mounted on the ROV sides, one on the face of the vehicle and other on the bottom of the vehicle. A high resolution imaging sonar is also available, increasing the ROVs visual range and functionality in varying conditions. Sonar records as well as digital video imagery are products from ROV dives.

Fig-3.1Fig-3.2Source: (www.stemulate.org) source: (www.aditech-usa.com) ROVs are often kept aboard vessels mounting submersible operations for several reasons. In the event that a submersible becomes entangled, an ROV can investigate the scene to help the operators make decisions. If appropriate, cutter blades can be deployed to the manipulator arm to free the sub. If a sub loses power and is not able to dive, the ROVs manipulator arm can grab onto the sub. The deck crew can then bring it to the surface.ROVs also support exploration and science objectives. When the submersible cannot be used because of weather or maintenance problems, the ROV often can take its place. It can also be used to investigate questionable dive sites before a sub is deployed, limiting risk to the expensive subs and their pilots.ROVs are invaluable in inspecting subsea structures and sending real-time videos and environmental data to human operators who supervise the task at hand. But those vehicles are connected by a data and power tether, a heavy cable that can be miles long and can easily get tangled and damage subsea structures. The alternate to ROVs are AUVs (Autonomous underwater water vehicles).Currently they are under pilot testing and will be launched soon.Deep water Pipeline Repair Robotic System:Transport of oil products by subsea pipelines requires not only laying of the pipes but also requires repair and connection techniques for the pipes. Deep sea pipeline repair is very expensive because of the operating costs, production loss and investments involved and also the operations involving the presence of man being limited to depths of about 300 meters. Therefore, a versatile system that can be put into operation very rapidly is required for greater depths and dealing with emergencies occurring in the repair operations. Deep Sea Repair System uses underwater robots of modular design that will permit pipe ends to be prepared automatically before they are connected.Some remote-controlled machines and an underwater welding robot have installed a new tie-in point on a live gas pipeline, without the pipeline being prepared in advance called Hot Tapping (Under pressure drilling). Hot tapping is a procedure undertaken when a branch connection is required off a live pipe in constant operation. Thebranch connectioncould be required to bypass agas pipeline section due for repair of pipes,outlet pipe replacement and water pipe alteration or gas pipe relocation. Hot tappingenables the installation of a connection without any disruption to the live pipeline. This methodlive weldsor mechanically fits an isolating valve to a short section of the pipe. Once the isolation valve is fitted it is opened to allow the drilling tool to be screwed or flanged into place. When the pipe has been drilled to

Fig-3.3 Source: (www.marinetechnologies.com)the maximum hole the isolation valve is turned off and all drilling equipment is removed.Simply explained, a remote-controlled hot tap operation consists of a robot welding a T-piece on to the pipe, while gas is flowing through it. When that has been done, a remote-controlled drilling machine will drill holes in the producing pipeline, with no effect on pressure and production. If an underwater robot is to repair a damaged pipe, it needs to anchor itself to a solid surface so that it can apply force to carry out its task without pushing itself away. It then needs to detach and move on to its next assignment for further repair process. Fig-3.4 -Source: (www.goe-group.com)A group of MIT researchers has designed a "controllable adhesion system" for underwater robots that offers a high coil holding force on various geometries. It has low energy consumption, low chemical resistance to seawater, and low maintenance.The Deep water pipeline repair robots can work for water depths down to 1000 meters.Topside Robotic System Platforms: As it is difficult to access subsea installations, some oil & gas exploration companies are using unmanned automated topside platforms through increased accessibility for large maintenance operations. These topside platforms may statistically recover up to 22 percent more of the oil or gas than a subsea alternative in a reservoir. Due to these reasons, Intelligent and reliable robotic & instrumentation systems has been developed to enable onshore operators to monitor and control all of the offshore platforms processes.Compared to their current manned counterparts, the normally-unmanned oil platforms offer potentially significantly lower commissioning and operating costs. Remote inspection and maintenance (I&M) operations can be performed on the offshore oil and gas platforms as an alternative to traditional offshore platforms. The platforms separate the work area accessible by human operators from a closed permanently unmanned area serviced by robots. Some important scheduled I & M operations inside the permanently unmanned area can be performed by robots to replace human operators such as gauge readings, valve and lever operations and monitoring gas level, leakage and surface conditions. Some standard robot manipulators are mounted on a mobile platform to automatically connect to custom built tools and sensors such as vibration measurement sensors, a valve operating tool and a lid operation tool. The operators will remain on land and are able to perform different tasks, reducing both risks and costs involve in the exploration.Inspection robots:To mitigate the risk and cost occurring in maintenance of oil & gas drilling platforms inspection robot came into existence. These robots will be able to inspect the equipment on board the platform. They are mounted on the traversing beams through which they move around, listen, take photographs and make measurements.The robot platform has various application specific sensors, such as a stereo microphone as well as gas and fire sensors. Wireless LAN and Bluetooth are deployed to enable the robot to communicate with the central control PC and with a mobile operator control device.

Fig-3.5 Source:(www.Sciencedaily.com)The robot is capable of safe navigation in offshore environments, which enables the robot to autonomously record sensor data at key locations or continuously monitor sensor data along a predetermined path. A manual operator control device can be used to teach the robot to perform the inspection tasks. After the inspection tasks have been taught, the robot autonomously executes the inspection tasks. The sensor data are recorded and displayed at the central control PC. The operators in the central control room are able to supervise all relevant sensor data in real time. In addition, the robot can be tele operated to assist the user by analyzing data of its environment sensors. The user drives the robot around platform in order to get close to the objects that need to be inspected or manipulated. A graphical user interface can display the objects detected by the robot through its sensors. The robot can then perform the planned tasks automatically such as executing movements or grasping operations to solve tasks, e.g. positioning its camera in front of a gauge or turning a hand wheel.A lot of things have to be thought out carefully when human actions are replaced by robot movements. Sensors are one aspect of this. Another is the matter of operations that involve contact, such as when a robot has to pick up something from the floor. Contact operations are a particular challenge, because the robot is very strong and it can easily destroy the equipment with which it comes into contact, unless we keep its strength fully under control. The scientists have therefore fitted the robot with a force sensor that enables them to measure the forces exerted by its grippers, for example.The robot is similar to a computer, in that it does exactly what it is told. Unlike a human being, it will not move aside if it collides with something else.

Fig-3.6 Source:(www.rds.no)

On a platform where a number of robots are in operation, there could be collisions between them and the other equipment. One of the systems on which the researchers are working has the straight forward aim of ensuring that the robot will never collide with anything. This is where our mathematicians come in, when we have 3D models of the robots and we know their positions, we can input these data into a 3D model that calculates the distance between the robot and other equipment. As long as the distance between them is greater than zero, there will be no collision.

Fig-3.7 Source:(www.cyberneticzoo.com)