Attitude and Heading Reference System for a laboratory drilling rig control system

Abstract

This thesis describes the work done in contribution to the UiS Drillbotics 2020 drill rig design for the annual international Drillbotics competition. Drillbotic is a competition for universities to design and build a miniature drilling rig that autonomously drills through a rock sample, with control algorithms and sensors. This thesis’s objective is to documents the work related to the design of a tracking system for a drill bit on a miniature drilling rig. This design included implementing an Attitude and Heading reference system (AHRS), kinematics, calibration of sensors, and design of a bottom hole sensor card to be implemented in an existing control system. Furthermore, it was worked on changing the existing actuator controllers from an Arduino based system to PLC. The tracing system was designed for in association with the new guidelines for the annual international Drillbotics competition. One of the new rules implemented in the 2020 Drillbotics competition is the mandatory requirements for the use of both surface and downhole sensors. In this thesis, I focus on the designing and implementation of a tracing system. This includes the design and testing of different sensor calibration and estimation methods to find a solution for tracking the drill bit in real-time. The developed tracing system should be able to track the drilling path through a known rock sample.