Autonomous Robotic Inspections: Insights from SLB Experts on the Journey to Autonomous Operations

Improve your productivity while enhancing safety and sustainability
Whether your challenge is equipment and process uptime; data acquisition, quantification, and interpretation; personnel safety; or carbon footprint reduction, our autonomous robotic inspections can help. As they patrol your process facility, FPSO, or offshore platform, these robots continuously inform your asset performance management system in real time with contextualized, quantified, and synchronized data.
Multiple types of robots with various sensors (payloads) enable acquiring data, including photographs, from diverse locations without disrupting operations, while minimizing personnel exposure to hazardous locations and confined spaces. Different sensors can acquire data simultaneously and data collection is more consistent. Robots are immune to the tedium of repetitive tasks that can lead to human errors. The data is analyzed and used to generate (and subsequently update) a digital twin of your facility in real time. By filling gaps in instrumentation and data, you can generate additional insights into the health of your equipment and facility and provide critical information for your asset performance management solutions.
Operating issues can be detected before they escalate and lead to shutdowns or HSE incidents. Predictive, condition-based maintenance is also more cost efficient. Freed from mundane and repetitive data collection, your teams have more time to focus their expertise on generating greater value for your operations.
How we can help
We have been working with multiple providers to integrate their robot hardware with our digital technologies and provide you with advanced solutions. Leveraging our extensive experience in building, operating, and maintaining process facilities, we can also undertake turnkey projects, if required, to make your site "robot friendly." Deployment and commissioning support is available for initiating robotic inspections and integrating robots with your existing operations. SLB can also assist with subsequent robot operation, maintenance, and repair.
Retrofit or custom design
As acceptance of robotic inspections grows and the technology evolves, facilities will be designed for such automation. Decreasing permanently installed instrumentation, detecting emissions faster, and potentially reducing size, personnel, and logistics will lower capex, opex, and environmental impact. These savings are especially significant on offshore facilities, such as FPSOs, where the financial and environmental effects of accommodating personnel on board and transporting them back and forth can be significant. Existing facilities can be retrofitted to accommodate robots (e.g., by replacing stairs with ramps).
Find out more www.slb.com/Robots