At BP’s Thunder Horse oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, a robot called Maggie performs the dangerous job of inspection by using magnetic tracks to move through the pipes connecting the oil facility to the sea floor.
Before Maggie by BP, technicians were doing the same job, while rappelling along the platform. Now, the oil and gas energy industry is starting to adopt robots and drones, which can reduce costs and most importantly improve safety.
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As Reuters reports, drones inspect equipment which is is located high in an oil rig, while robots test equipment underneath the sea for microscopic metal cracks.
Maggie by using magnetic crawlers, moves through rigs, platforms, and pipelines leveraging ultrasonic test devices and high-definition cameras. BP is using Maggie on the Thunder Horse platform since last year and plans to deploy similar technology to other platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in the future.
With robots, BP is attempting to reduce as much as possible the possible for safety risk, will it is gaining many benefits, by the data that the robots can collect. Namely, drones and robots performs inspections much faster the humans, while also less people are put into danger.
Technology has the ability to reduce platforms’ shutdowns and perform inspections on dangerous equipment, which in other cases may have put someone in danger, or shut down the operation of the platform.
