The SPE Drillbotics competition is an applied research and development challenge organized by the SPE Drilling Systems Advancement Technical Section, designed to expose students to real-world drilling automation problems. Held annually, the competition features two categories: (1) physical category focused on building and operating a miniature drilling rig, and (2) virtual category that leverages programming and digital technologies to model virtual drilling systems.
Drillbotics is often described as a student competition—but that description barely captures what it actually feels like to participate. In this article, we reflect on Drillbotics not as spectators or organizers, but as engineers who lived through its long nights, design failures, and last-minute decisions. Through a conversational interview format, we share how Drillbotics changed the way we think about drilling systems, teamwork, and what it really means to be industry-ready.
Although born and raised in very different regions, Joel Sekyi Mensah and Charalmapos (Harry) Soilemezidis followed remarkably similar pathways, both being introduced to Drillbotics through their university’s petroleum engineering programs.
Mensah is the team lead of the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) Drillbotics team in Ghana, a role he has held for the past 3 years after previously participating as a student member and founding contributor. He also founded the UMaT Drillbotics Club, which has trained more than 50 students in programming, automation, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship, contributing indirectly to the creation of a startup. More recently, he serves as a YP in the SPE Research & Development Technical Section (RDTS).
Similarly, Charalmapos (Harry) Soilemezidis began his Drillbotics journey as a student team member before transitioning into a leadership role. Between 2021 and 2025, he led the TU Clausthal Drillbotics team through three competition cycles, managing multidisciplinary engineering groups and coordinating the development of a lab-scale directional drilling system. This work resulted in three iterative prototype generations of a 1.5-in.-directional drilling tool. Since then, he has gained hands-on operational experience as a field engineer at Weatherford and is transitioning into a systems engineering role focused on innovative shallow horizontal drilling technologies.
Alongside his industry role, he founded CLS Engineering & Energy, a consultancy providing simulation-based engineering analyses and feasibility studies for shallow geothermal systems, supporting municipalities and public stakeholders in sustainable energy planning.
In the following, we share our Drillbotics experiences and share advice for YPs who may be interested in participating in a future Drillbotics competition.
How did each of you first get involved in Drillbotics?
JM: During my second year as an undergraduate, I developed a strong interest in programming and began looking for practical ways to apply what I was learning. The search led me to Drillbotics, which UMaT was preparing to participate in at the time. I reached out to the team and, the following year, formally joined after discussions with our faculty advisor.
CS: During the first year of my bachelor’s degree studies, everything felt very abstract. Then, in my second year, I met a lecturer in deep drilling technologies, Erik Feldmann, who also happened to be a former Drillbotics team leader. He showed me and a few colleagues around, introduced us to the competition, and before I could even properly process what was happening, we were already registered and starting to build our own rig.
Drillbotics simulates real-world challenges. Was there a moment during Drillbotics when you realized this was very different from classroom learning, and what skills did it lead you to develop that traditional coursework didn’t?
CS: This question brings back one very specific memory. I think the moment I truly realized I was learning something completely new was right before our first competition in 2021. It was around 2:00 a.m., and I was sitting next to a PhD student who was desperately trying to teach me programming. Up until then, my computer skills were basically limited to Excel and Word for coursework. I suddenly had to become good at something I had never touched in my life before. But that’s exactly what Drillbotics does to you—there’s this moment where you think, “We need to fix this right now … and there is literally nobody else here who can.” So you adapt, you improvise, and you start doing things even before you fully understand what you’re doing. I guess that’s what people call learning by doing.
The most important skill Drillbotics teaches, in my opinion, is not technical, it’s a mindset. It doesn’t really matter what your major is. What matters is how fast you can learn, adapt, and keep going when things seem impossible.
JM: Drillbotics was my first exposure to real-world engineering beyond prescribed solutions. In classrooms, we are often taught established methods and idealized workflows. Drillbotics pushes this further, using coursework and literature as a starting point, then learning, unlearning and relearning to build practical systems. I recall a time when the team needed to develop a virtual steering system. While I understood the theory from class, translating it into a working design required justifying assumptions, reviewing literature, and then implementing the model. We realized that research papers provided a lot of constants, which made it impossible to develop a practical steering system. This forced us to rethink our approach by understanding the behavior of the selected tool, including its limitations and how that will influence the way our system responds to heterogeneities and uncertainties.
I would say Drillbotics exceeded my expectations. Through this process, I refined my approach to problem-solving, developed my programming skills, expanded into machine learning, and learned how to operate under uncertainty. Leading a team through technical and resource constraints improved my leadership, systems thinking, and ability to build both solutions and culture in a rapidly evolving engineering environment.
Was there one failure or setback that fundamentally changed your approach as a Leader?
JM: Prior to becoming the team lead, as a student team member, we experienced a devastating failure. On the day of the competition, our code crashed, and despite months of effort, we were unable to demonstrate that our system worked. That moment was difficult, but it was also instructive. Looking back, the failure was not just technical. We lacked the right systems and structures, and we were overly ambitious, pursuing complex solutions before fully testing simpler, more reliable ones.
When I later became team lead, this experience fundamentally changed my approach. I prioritized building robust system architectures, incremental testing, and a more diverse and multidisciplinary team. The lesson was clear that engineering success depends as much on systems, structure, and people as it does on technical ideas.
CS: Looking back, I can see that the most stressful periods were always the times when the team experienced a lot of fluctuations in its members. Naturally, as students graduate, they leave the university to pursue their careers. This creates space for new people, which is a good thing, but it also comes with a challenge. Every time new members join, it takes a significant effort to rebuild previous working routines and regain the same level of efficiency and trust within the team.
If there is one thing Drillbotics truly changed in me as a leader, it would be this: I stopped focusing only on the work itself and started caring much more about the people behind it. Creating a working environment where team members feel appreciated and genuinely useful is, at least from my perspective, the best and maybe the only way to motivate someone to give their full effort to a project and stay with the team as long as possible before the cycle of training new members begins again. Especially in a student team, where you can’t simply pay everyone, treating people well and making them feel part of something meaningful becomes the most important leadership tool.
Drillbotics teams are multidisciplinary. What did you learn about working across disciplines under time pressure?
CS: These days, every serious company or organization requires a certain degree of interdisciplinarity within its teams and sometimes, disciplines that are not directly connected to the technical work can still have a huge impact.
One example was during our preparation for the 2023 competition. Our team consisted of two petroleum engineers and two mechanical engineers, one of them with a solid software background. We were a good team, well dialed in, and very much in our typical engineer bubble. Then one of my colleagues suggested we bring in a guy who was majoring in marketing and economics. And as you might imagine, as engineers, we usually try to keep a safe distance from the economists. But when this guy joined the team, I quickly realized he filled a gap we didn’t even know we had. Suddenly, we had a proper marketing campaign to attract new members, and the existing team gained a whole new way of presenting and promoting our work. By the time I left, the team had already grown to 11 people.
What I learned was that under time pressure, the best solutions don’t always come from the expected disciplines; sometimes they come from the person you least thought you needed.
JM: Working under tight timelines made the importance of multidisciplinary teams very clear. Earlier versions of our team lacked diversity, which often meant that individuals carried excessive workloads rather than benefiting from true collaboration. As we built a more diverse team, we saw a significant improvement in both speed and quality of execution.
Different perspectives led to more creative and effective problem-solving, which was critical given the 1-year project cycle. At the same time, diversity introduced conflicting ideas and approaches. Managing this taught me the importance of building an open team culture and establishing a structured decision-making process so ideas could be evaluated objectively and efficiently under pressure.
Looking back, how did Drillbotics prepare you for real industry roles?
JM: Looking back, Drillbotics prepared me for industry by teaching me how real engineering systems are conceived, built, tested, and deployed under constraints. It instilled in me the mindset that there is always a better solution, and that improving a system requires questioning assumptions and looking beyond conventional approaches.
Through Drillbotics, I learned to navigate the engineering life cycle, from problem definition and design justification to implementation, testing, and deployment. The experience has improved my problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills, especially in automation-focused workflows that extend well beyond classroom theory. Most importantly, it exposed me to current industry trends and the realities of working in fast-paced, technology-driven engineering environments.
CS: One could definitely say: yes, Drillbotics prepared me well for the challenges I will face in my career. It gave me the self-confidence I needed to adapt quickly and learn on my own when stepping into unfamiliar situations.
If a student or young professional is considering Drillbotics, what would you tell them?
CS: “Just do it.” Opportunities like this are rare in life. Although studying and sometimes working while in university can already be demanding, Drillbotics is still absolutely worth it. Looking back, I’m sure many of our team members didn’t really see it as work, but more as a hobby and something they genuinely enjoyed doing in their free time. At least that’s how it felt for me.
JM: I would encourage them to embrace Drillbotics as more than a competition. It is a preparation ground for the future of the industry. As drilling moves toward greater automation and autonomy, Drillbotics equips participants with both the technical skills in automation and the soft and transferable skills needed to operate in uncertain, fast-evolving environments. Beyond coding or controls, it teaches systems thinking, teamwork, and resilience.
If you want to be industry-ready and positioned to create real value in the energy sector, Drillbotics is an experience worth pursuing.
Acknowledgements
JM: Special thanks go to the organizers of the SPE Drillbotics competition. I would like to thank Fred Florence, founder of Drillbotics, for his support during and after the competition, and for his efforts in enabling me to participate and present at the 2025 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference. I also thank Shashi Talya, Eric Cayeux, and Enrique Losoya for their contributions and support. I am equally grateful to John De Wardt for the work he continues to do to ensure Drillbotics thrives, even in the face of funding constraints.
My appreciation also goes to associate professor Richard Amorin, our former faculty advisor, for the opportunity, motivation, and belief in the team, as well as to our project advisor, Graham Mensa-Wilmot, for his guidance, practical insight and steady support throughout the project. To the UMaT Drillbotics, I want to thank you for your hard work, sacrifice, and dedication.
Lastly, I would like to thank Gaurav Agrawal and the RDTS Board for their support in making this article possible.
CS: I would like to sincerely thank the organizers of the SPE Drillbotics competition for creating such a valuable experience for students and young engineers. In particular, I am grateful to Fred Florence, the founder of Drillbotics, and to Enrique Losoya for their continued support and leadership of the program.
I also want to thank the TU Clausthal Drillbotics Team for their hard work, dedication, and teamwork throughout the development of our system. Special thanks go to our faculty advisors, Erik Feldmann, our supervisor Wolfgang Hollstein and Philip Jaeger, for their guidance and encouragement during the project.
Charalmapos (Harry) Soilemezidis is a petroleum engineer with a background in systems engineering and research and development. From 2021 to 2025, he led the TU Clausthal Drillbotics team and is currently working as a systems engineer. He serves as a YP in the SPE R&D Technical Section Board.
Joel Sekyi Mensah is a researcher at UMaT, Ghana, leading the UMaT Drillbotics and contributing to funded projects, with prior drill and blast experience in mining. He serves as YP in the SPE R&D Technical Section Board.