Anker BP To Test Walking Robot Dog ‘Spot’ Aboard Offshore Oil & Gas Platform

Remember Spot the dog from your childhood books? Well, ‘he’ is about to be involved in a ground-breaking series of tests exploring the use of robots and drones on offshore oil and gas installations.

And yes – it sort of looks like Spot because it’s yellow and has four legs and walks much like a dog except that it departs from your childhood memories with faintly creepy luminous green ‘eyes’. And the walk is kind of creepy too. You need to watch it go up a set of stairs.

But – Spot could be transformational. It’ll be doing a range of things both above and below water, including hydrocarbon leaks, which would ordinarily put humans at some risk. If it works, well – that could all change.

The project is being led by Aker BP working alongside the AI software-as-a-service company Cognite and they’ll evaluate the performances of robotic devices in autonomous inspection, data capture and report generation. The tests will be carried out on Aker BP’s Skarv installation throughout the year.

Using Cognite’s Cloud-based industrial data operations and intelligence platform, it’ll enable easy access to information supporting analytical operations and data-driven decision-making.

“Digitalization will be one of the differentiators between the oil companies of the world, in order to be able to deliver low cost and low emissions. Our vision is to digitalize all our operations from cradle to grave in order to increase productivity, enhance quality and improve the safety of our employees. Exploring the potential of robotics offshore underpin our digital journey,” said Karl Johnny Hersvik, CEO of Aker BP.

“The key to Aker BP and Cognite’s robotics initiative is that it combines industry-leading hardware and software. By ingesting data collected by robots into Cognite Data Fusion, Aker BP engineers will be able to see it in context with data from across the company’s operations and make data-driven decisions that improve efficiency and safety,” said Dr. John Markus Lervik, CEO of Cognite.

The Aker BP Spot will join the likes of the Massachusetts State Police’s Spot, which has been ‘quietly’ tested (that’s what every paper says about it, though it’s in every paper which is more than a little ironic) since last year. This Spot has the ability to open doors using an attachment on its back which isn’t featured on Aker BP’s model but the potential to add this (depending on which side of the fence you sit on), it’s either super useful or incredibly freaky. If you veer to the latter, don’t watch Black Mirror’s ‘Metalhead’ episode.