Proceedings of2013IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics nd Automation August 4 - 7, Tkamatsu, Japn A Review of Robotics In Onshore Oil-Gas Industry Amit Shla and Hamad Karki Deparment of Mechanical Engineering he Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE {ashukla, hkarki}@pi.ac.ae Abstract-With shrinking resources and increasing demand for petroleum products, oil and gas industries are forced to rethink over their present pace for automatization of industry. New oil ields, mostly located in extreme conditions, are posing serious challenges to both human and environment in terms of safety. Tasks which are repeated, dirty, and dangerous and require high degree of accuracy are already automatized in manufacturing industry. This success has inspired oil and gas industry to lend some of its highly dangerous and repetitive tasks for automation. Most of the processes are remotely operated, and require highly skilled operator. Such processes beneits not only in terms of overall health and safety, by removing humans from hazardous environment, but also by reduction of number staf members required for continuous inspection and manipulation of plant facilities. Considering the sensitivity of inlammable products involved in this industry usage of completely autonomous robots is still a far fetch choice. Therefore, semi-autonomous robots are excellent choice for this industry at-least as near future solution. In oil and gas industry, robots are used both in upstream and downstream process such as pipe handling in drilling operations, pipe inspection , tank inspection, and remote controlled underwater vehicles (ROVs). This paper presents the state of art technology particularly related to application of robotic solutions to in-pipe inspection robots (lPIRs) and tank inspection robots (TIRs) at onshore oil and gas facilities. I. I NTRODUCTION Global demand for oil and gas, is increasing with increasing indusrial growth and will remain high in foreseeable uture. With ever increasing consumption, at present it is 142 Mboe/d (million barrels of oil equivalent per day), easy resources of peroleum products are shrinking very fast, and remaining oil and gas ields are characterized by such adjectives as arctic, deep-water, cold, heavy, high in water content, high sulur content, to name but a few [1]. Increased production demand and diicult oil ields have not only increased the cost of production, but also compounded the risks related to human security and environmental safety. Recent ragic events such as the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico [2] has caught attention of not only govements and environmentalists but also of all the major players rom the peroleum indusry for necessity of safer exploration of oil and gas [3]. The process of protecting the environment rom oil spill, by running damage conrol and cleanup oper ations and setting up the unds for compensating victims of ragedy, has costed almost US$20 billion to BP [4]. In the wake of several terrible oil spill crisis, European Commission has unded several research projects with main objective of developing innovative intelligent robot technologies for oil spill management [5], [6]. Growing challenges within indusry, such 978-1-4673-5560-5/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 1153 as lower recovery rate, exploration of unconventional reserves and operation in exreme environmental conditions, has put need for raising the level of automation high on the agenda [7]. There are several critical parameters for operation of oil and gas indusries such as safety of human lives, environmental concen, cost eiciency, optimization of proitability of busi ness model and increased production. Srategies for successul handling of above mentioned challenges, call for new radical innovations such as intelligent drilling rigs, smart inspection and manipulation, and automated operations for production. For example a Norwegian company named Robotic Drilling Systems, has signed a joint research program with NASA to develop technology for intelligent drilling [3]. ABB has also developed a robotics-based remote automation system prototype, capable of performing inspection and maintenance of an oil and gas process module [7]. Though most of the robotic technology in oil and gas indusry is still used in a manner of operation assistant in the process of inspection, manipulation and rescue missions. II. R OBOTICS IN ONSHORE CONDITIONS Oil and gas indusry has extensive usage of all kinds of pipes and storage tanks during diferent stages of business starting rom exploration, exraction, ransportation, processing and disribution. P ipes and storage tanks need regular inspec tion and maintenance especially those continuously used for long distance ransportation and long term storage. Humanly inspecting these components are expensive and hazardous, so automated inspection and manipulation for these components are very much desired. Most of the robotic research, for oil and gas indusry, has been dedicated to developing in-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) and tanks inspection robots (TIRs). A. Pipe inspection At onshore peroleum plants, pipes are used as a tool for ransportation of oil, gas and other luids, rom production sites to disribution sites. These pipes are mostly laid down under water or underground environment. In such environments pipes are subjected to exreme weather conditions such as hot, cold, humidity and dust. These unfavorable conditions lead to many roubles in pipes such as corrosion, erosion, deposition, cracks, thermal cycling, pitting, shock loading and joint-failure etc. [8]. Any kind of leakage of peroleum products rom pipes not only causes loss of revenue but also invites ecological disaster. Therefore, regular inspection and maintenance of ransporta tion pipes are srongly demanded for safe operation. Traditional