Abstract
A drive to reduce costs, carbon emissions, and the number of required personnel in the offshore energy industry has led to proposals for the increased use of autonomous/robotic systems for many maintenance tasks. There are questions over how such missions can be shown to be safe. A corollary exists in the manned aviation world for helicopter–ship operations where a test pilot attempts to operate from a ship under a range of wind conditions and provides subjective feedback on the level of difficulty encountered. This defines the ship–helicopter operating limit envelope (SHOL). Due to the cost of creating a SHOL there has been considerable research activity to demonstrate that much of this process can be performed virtually. Unmanned vehicles, however, have no test pilot to provide feedback. This paper therefore explores the possibility of adapting manned simulation techniques to the unmanned world to demonstrate that a mission is safe. Through flight modelling and simulation techniques it is shown that operating envelopes can be created for an oil rig inspection task and that, by using variable performance specifications, these can be tailored to suit the level of acceptable risk. The operating envelopes produced provide condensed and intelligible information regarding the environmental conditions under which the UAS can perform the task.
Highlights
With more than five decades of production and supply chain experience, exporting around the world, the oil and gas sector is a UK industrial success story [1]
The black arrow indicates the straight-line direction of travel from the mission-start to the mission-end location, ignoring any obstacles in the path, and corresponds to the arrow that appears on subsequent plots. This figure is shown to illustrate the number of missions tested and used to form an Operating Envelope for a given case
A modelling and simulation approach has been presented to address the problem of assuring safe operation of an autonomous UAS performing an inspection mission around an offshore energy asset
Summary
With more than five decades of production and supply chain experience, exporting around the world, the oil and gas sector is a UK industrial success story [1] It is facing a number of significant challenges over both the short and long term, including ageing infrastructure, declining production rates, reduced drilling exploration success rates, and an ageing workforce [2]. These have been compounded by low oil prices and the demand to shift to more renewable energy sources. An autonomous unmanned aerial system (UAS, aka “drone”), the focus of this paper, will need to contain computer systems that can replace the function of a human pilot operating the UAS by remote control when operating beyond visual line of sight [4]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
