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Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

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Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#141

Post by ryanmarsh »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #118
fizixer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The limit to automation in this industry and others is, quite frankly, how bad these companies are at making software. Your statement contradicts the rest of your paragraph (that the article is naive and far fetched). Because if this is really true, then it's only a matter of assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts (who know the domain and are good s/w engineers), pair it up with the team of…

It is not a matter of assembling a team. It is a matter of corporate culture. You can't bolt software on to an organization like that. They simply do not understand, deeply and utterly. It might be willfully. Just identifying defects clearly can be quite a bit beyond some people. But I heartily recommend that you try it. You will learn a lot about humanity.

This. It's SO HARD to recruit good teams and even when you do projects fail because of the impedance mismatch between software development and bureaucracy.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#142

Post by ryanmarsh »

XorNot wrote: post #88
leereeves wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation as defined by that comment is a really low bar. It probably is possible. > That means an engineer can design an oil well at his desk. With the press of a button, an automated system would identify the equipment needed from a supplier, create a 3D model and send instructions for building it out into the field, Hashmi says. “That is automation.” I'd be very surprised if that doesn't already exist: printing a…

It's not hard to imagine a search engine which matches mechanical descriptions of parts to a proposed design automatically. Just draw roughly what you need, punch in the specs, and let the expert-system provide a least-cost bill-of-materials which comes nearest the ratings + a list of custom parts.

OMFG the hubris. I don't know where to start. Oil and Gas exploration and production are a Hard Problem. Visit the Offshore Technology Conference sometime.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#143

Post by ArkyBeagle »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #141
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a matter of assembling a team. It is a matter of corporate culture. You can't bolt software on to an organization like that. They simply do not understand, deeply and utterly. It might be willfully. Just identifying defects clearly can be quite a bit beyond some people. But I heartily recommend that you try it. You will learn a lot about humanity.

This. It's SO HARD to recruit good teams and even when you do projects fail because of the impedance mismatch between software development and bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy has to do Real Work(tm). Gor bless 'em :)

Leadership of tech, especially disruptive tech, is SFAIK mostly half black art and half blackmail.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#144

Post by fizixer »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #140
fizixer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The limit to automation in this industry and others is, quite frankly, how bad these companies are at making software. Your statement contradicts the rest of your paragraph (that the article is naive and far fetched). Because if this is really true, then it's only a matter of assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts (who know the domain and are good s/w engineers), pair it up with the team of…

You do realize that "assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts ..., pair it up with the team of engineers and line workers)" is like kryptonite for these people right? It's impossible. I've seen them try over and over and fail. The one time I saw a client assemble a great software team with great domain experts we had project managers who wanted to rescue the project from the jaws of success. We…

> You do realize that "assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts ..., pair it up with the team of engineers and line workers)" is like kryptonite for these people right?

I don't care if it's a kryptonite for these people. My point is that if that's the problem, then automation is "technically" a solved problem! only that it has "managerial" challenges (and managerial challenges of white-elephant corporations are solved by small startups. So it may be bad news for big corporations, but it's good news for the progress of the rigging industry).

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#145

Post by MaulingMonkey »

PeterisP wrote: post #90
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You piqued my interest and I'm less lazy. This seems to be the sales pitch for an unautomated version that seems to give a good feel for what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBPiszqZnz4 This looks to be one of the more automated versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D4F3Vo4nzM And this one of the more manual processes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqLALzUft8Y

So it's less like robots doing stuff autonomously and more like larger specialized power tools that can allow 1-2 people to run a process that used to require 3-4 people.

Mmm - it's a continuum. This one looks like it's entirely telepresence - the only part that may be missing is the software to make it fully automatic, and perhaps some of the sensors depending on where they've hidden the control station (e.g. is some of it line-of-sight control):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvI8XMaRBJY

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#146

Post by leereeves »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #113
leereeves wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation as defined by that comment is a really low bar. It probably is possible. > That means an engineer can design an oil well at his desk. With the press of a button, an automated system would identify the equipment needed from a supplier, create a 3D model and send instructions for building it out into the field, Hashmi says. “That is automation.” I'd be very surprised if that doesn't already exist: printing a…

> printing a 3D model, submitting an order for the parts, and sending the documentation to the field. Hahaha. No, let me talk you through it (assuming we are talking new technology, as opposed to a small refinement of existing stuff): Engineer sits at his desk/wherever and has an idea for some equipment. We're at TRL 0 (following API 17N). Engineer spends some time demonstrating and documenting how it's likely that t…

According to the article, what I quoted is what Hashmi described when he said “That is automation.”

If that's what he's talking about, I think it's possible if not already in place.

But I agree, replacing all the testing and the skills of an entire company is another matter entirely, and there is certainly a lot more to be done than was described in the comment I was talking about.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#147

Post by ryanmarsh »

fizixer wrote: post #144
ryanmarsh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that "assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts ..., pair it up with the team of engineers and line workers)" is like kryptonite for these people right? It's impossible. I've seen them try over and over and fail. The one time I saw a client assemble a great software team with great domain experts we had project managers who wanted to rescue the project from the jaws of success. We…

> You do realize that "assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts ..., pair it up with the team of engineers and line workers)" is like kryptonite for these people right? I don't care if it's a kryptonite for these people. My point is that if that's the problem, then automation is "technically" a solved problem! only that it has "managerial" challenges (and managerial challenges of white-elephant…

It is theoretically a solved problem, and yes, this is good news for more nimble companies. However the "managerial problem" as you call it is immense. It is almost intractable. Source: They hire me to fix the "managerial problem"

Let me break this down.

You build a company, any company, and it's core business is doing something, anything, OTHER THAN MAKING SOFTWARE. You get good at it, you get big. Internal processes and culture might be totally fucked to the individual observer but as a whole the organism is thriving in its environment. So if the company sucks at making software you can bet (that until this point) being good at software has not been critical for survival in its environment. Hell there are plenty of software companies that are horrible at making software and yet they survive because being good at making software is (for whatever reason) not required for survival in their environment (market).

So you have all these companies that are really good at pouring concrete, or not paying insurance policies, or flying airplanes, drilling for oil. They all suck at software but WHO CARES. They buy technology from companies that make it better than they could and the rest they cobble together SOMEHOW.

Now imagine you've reached peak: materials science, labor cost reduction, managerial science, globalization, etc...

You and your competitors have all outsourced, matrixed, offshored, bought, invested, borrowed, hedged, and most of all deployed the best COTS tech available for your needs.

What do you do now? How do you get an edge over your competitors? What space is left where 10x gains can happen seemingly overnight?

Software.

Companies are slowly arriving at this notion. The problem is they are these very uniquely tailored organisms and everything about their evolution seems almost tailored to suck at software. They throw immense sums of money at software projects. They hire the best firms in the business (they think) and it JUST DOESN'T WORK. Uber and AirBnB quickly gathered more respective capacity than their traditional competitors and it ALL JUST LOOKS SO EASY but these big companies with massive budgets can't make software to save their lives. Even some old software companies can't make software to save their lives.

The problem is systemic:

* Company wide HR practices are toxic to hiring good developers

* Technical ability in leaders isn't respected

* Complexity isn't fundamentally understood

* The first-principles of software are like Klingon

* Bureaucracy has an impedance mismatch with software development

I could go on and on. The only clients I've had that have a chance of overcoming this inertia have leaders starting from th CEO on down drink the Kool-aid and decide that they want to become a tech company. These folks aren't perfect but they begin to reassess everything, compare themselves to companies that are great at making software and start cargo culting everything they can find. That begins to bring about the kind of change that might make them good at software. It's ugly, but its better than the status quo. Still, they are the precious few. The rest hire "agile coaches" like me and waste my time and their money and have a "snowball's chance in hell" of ever getting good at making software.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#148

Post by hackuser »

giggidygig wrote: post #130

Having worked in the industry for 10+ years now, first on deepwater oil rigs (drilling), now working IT for a large oil company, some things i've observed/experienced first hand which could provide some color to the automation side of things: 1) The smaller the company, the more agile/nimble you are forced to be out of pure need (no money or resources), this means you have to look at automating things in order to jus…

Thanks for sharing your knowledge of the industry. One question:

> The contractor/service companies (Halliburton, Schlumberger, BakerHughes/GE, Transocean, Nabors etc..) are probably the only ones in the industry that could successfully develop and use these types of automation technologies

> The big oil companies ... simply don't have the ability to effectively produce/innovate internally as a smaller company would.

Aren't the contractor/service companies large? Why are they more innovative than big oil?

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#149

Post by knn »

arjie wrote: post #125
ceedan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"5,000 jobs could be replaced" "cool opportunity" what a time to be alive

Why even would someone against that be on HN? It's a place where people interested in startups are. Automating jobs away is always seen as a fantastic opportunity here.

It's a great opportunity for those automating. I'm totally for automation as it creates wealth and I think is good for humanity in the long run, but people suffer from automation (losing jobs, homes, provision for their families) in the short term. People suffering from automation is a major reason why Trump was elected. It's highly insensitive to not be aware of the pain that is caused by automation by technologists like us.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#150

Post by lacampbell »

edblarney wrote: post #122
lacampbell wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pang of regret for choosing to get into software instead of a skilled trade. I'd love 3 weeks in, 1 week out.

Yeah, it's not so fun. You're in the middle of nowhere, usually work 10 hours a day. The 'basics' are well done: more food that you can possibly eat, maids, cooks, but you're basically spending your life in a 'work camp' type thing. You can make a ton of money for a couple of years, but it wears on people and usually they want out. That said, even a good plumber in SF should be able to earn some pretty good coin only…

Exactly - I want to be able to do something like this for a year or two max, then get out.
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