The single major advantage of robotics is automation, which drives other improvements in efficiency, productivity, and safety. Automation enables extensive inspection and maintenance tasks to be conducted while feeding back data to help limit operational costs and improve efficiency. Advances in modular and customizable robots is expected to result in growing deployment of robotics in the oil and gas industry, says data and analytics company GlobalData.
GlobalData’s report "Robotics in Oil and Gas" notes that, while robotics has been a part of the oil and gas industry for several decades, growing digitalization and integration with artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, have helped diversify robot use cases within the industry (Fig. 1).
“A huge number of robots are now being deployed in oil and gas operations, including terrestrial crawlers, quadrupeds, aerial drones, autonomous underwater vehicles, and remotely operated vehicles,” said Anson Fernandes, oil and gas analyst at GlobalData.
Robots have applications across the oil and gas industry in a wide variety of tasks, including surveys, material handling, construction, inspection, repair, and maintenance. They can be customized for various tasks to ease the work and improve efficiency. During the planning phases of an oil and gas project, robots can be deployed to conduct aerial surveys or they can be used to conduct seismic surveys during exploration. Aerial or underwater drones can be adopted depending on the project location and work requirements.
“Robotics is a fast-growing industry," Fernandes said. "According to GlobalData forecasts, it was worth $52.9 billion in 2021 and will reach $568 billion by 2030, recording a compound annual growth rate of 30%. Robots will be the industry’s growth engine, and the oil and gas sector will greatly benefit from emerging use cases.”
Data analytics and robotics improve insight obtained from surveys and surveillance exercises. This symbiotic relationship between robotics and wider digitalization technologies is expected to be further evolve through collaborations between technology providers and oil and gas industry players.
“The volume of robotics use cases in the oil and gas industry is expected to grow rapidly, in tow with digitalization," Fernandes said. "Industrial robots with analytical support from digital technologies is expected to become the mainstay across the oil and gas industry, especially in the upstream sector, where personnel safety and operational security concerns are heightened.”