Robotics as an Analytics Data Source #analytics #bigdata #automation #casestudy
21 May 19
2:00 PM
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2:30 PM
Tracks:
Robots and Drones
Robots and drones are being used across the Oil & Gas industry today and are already reducing human exposure to potentially hazardous situations and increasing operational efficiency. Unfortunately, these are often used as ad-hoc tools generating once off reports and so the full value of the data is not being realized. Shell has moving towards a model where robotics is used to perform general surveillance of an asset on a regular basis which gives asset owners better visibility into their facility condition. However, robotics by themselves are not an answer, as the volumes of data they generate make manual processing difficult. As such these robotic platforms are being combined with advanced analytics engines to translate robot data into actionable insight. To prove the viability of such a solution, a pilot project was run in 2018 to prove a hybrid drone/analytics solution could perform automated operation inspection rounds. After three months of training the algorithms using real data, a 3-week inspection period was performed. The team was able to demonstrate a substantial level of automation, with the majority of the items on the operator list being performed by the algorithm. Given additional time to collect and train algorithms the team is confident they close the remaining gaps to create a solution that could be commercially deployed. Looking forward to possible commercial deployments, there are still challenges around the data. How much of the raw data consumed by an algorithm are we obligated to keep, for how long and how do we transfer it? How do we ensure that this data meets global privacy regulations and what other relevant data regulations must we be aware of? These are not impossible questions to answer, but they need to be answered by consortium's of end users rather than as individuals. Our work shows that the algorithms are viable and so we need to start answering these questions now to enable robotics data to deliver on its true potential.