Digital Architecture for an Automated Drilling Rig
Abstract
The objective of this thesis was to develop the digital architecture for asmall-scale drill rig intended for use by the Drillbotics team at the Uni-versity of Stavanger, for an international student competition by the samename. The main goals of the project has been to develop a robust softwarearchitecture, data acquisition system, data management system and graphi-cal user interface. The main criteria are the guidelines given by competitionorganisers, criteria given in the thesis description, and criteria given by theDrillbotics team.We created a system for communication between the computer, programmablelogic controller and the drill rig such that we can communicate betweenplatforms using the CAN protocol. With this communication in place,both the data acquisition logging and control system can operate withoutdelay. Any data retrieved is stored in a data management system, as percompetition guidelines. The database has been stress tested and has a 15xsafety margin between operation- and top speed, ensuring the database willnot be a bottleneck.The main human machine interface for the drill rig, the graphical userinterface, on the computer was developed using principles researched inadvance to ensure an interface that was based on good industry practices.The big focus on researching proper methods of making the interface is dueto the competition recently adding human machine interface as a majorjudging criteria in the competition.A system has also been developed that covers models used for steering thedirectional drilling according to the industry standard minimum curvaturemethod. The path given by the minimum curvature method is the idealpath that we try to follow. The path also has safety margins given to it toensure the rig never strays too far from the path.The systems created in this project have had a side-goal of being scalableand using good abstractions such that it is able to be used by future Drill-botics teams, for both future computer science bachelor groups, or the restof the team as well. The objective of this thesis was to develop the digital architecture for asmall-scale drill rig intended for use by the Drillbotics team at the Uni-versity of Stavanger, for an international student competition by the samename. The main goals of the project has been to develop a robust softwarearchitecture, data acquisition system, data management system and graphi-cal user interface. The main criteria are the guidelines given by competitionorganisers, criteria given in the thesis description, and criteria given by theDrillbotics team.We created a system for communication between the computer, programmablelogic controller and the drill rig such that we can communicate betweenplatforms using the CAN protocol. With this communication in place,both the data acquisition logging and control system can operate withoutdelay. Any data retrieved is stored in a data management system, as percompetition guidelines. The database has been stress tested and has a 15xsafety margin between operation- and top speed, ensuring the database willnot be a bottleneck.The main human machine interface for the drill rig, the graphical userinterface, on the computer was developed using principles researched inadvance to ensure an interface that was based on good industry practices.The big focus on researching proper methods of making the interface is dueto the competition recently adding human machine interface as a majorjudging criteria in the competition.A system has also been developed that covers models used for steering thedirectional drilling according to the industry standard minimum curvaturemethod. The path given by the minimum curvature method is the idealpath that we try to follow. The path also has safety margins given to it toensure the rig never strays too far from the path.The systems created in this project have had a side-goal of being scalableand using good abstractions such that it is able to be used by future Drill-botics teams, for both future computer science bachelor groups, or the restof the team as well.