Human-robot cooperation for error recovery in oil and gas applications

Robotics technology has transformed industrial manufacturing to the extent that it is difficult nowadays to imagine a modern production line without robots. With robots being very well suited to perform repetitive routine tasks which are unpleasant or dangerous for a human to do, manufacturing a product, for example a car, just by manual labour is neither efficient nor cost effective. Furthermore, some of the tasks may require high repeatability precision which industrial robots are designed for. Despite the long list of benefits, robotic technology has not been widely spread in all industries such as in the oil and gas industry. However, this trend may now change as the world's demand for fossil fuels soars, and most of the key players of the industry are looking into methods to improve and expand the production efficiency as well as take care of arising health, safety and environmental (HSE) issues. The robotic technology has the potential to offer solutions to increase the automation of physical tasks in the field while the human operators can operate the overall integrated robotics system from a safe control room away from hazardous and unpleasant areas. This paper presents a novel approach to user interface based error recovery. The approach has been implemented and tested as part of an on-site robotics demonstrator at an onshore gas processing plant.