Aker BP and Cognite Pioneer Robotics Deployment Offshore to Transform Oil and Gas Industry with Autonomous Mission

Cognite Data Fusion powers Spot, the Boston Dynamics quadruped robot dog, as it completes autonomous mission onboard Aker BP Skarv installation in the North Sea

OSLO, Norway--(BUSINESS WIRE/AETOSWire)-- Cognite a global industrial AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) company supporting the full-scale digital transformation of heavy-asset industries around the world, has partnered with fully-fledged exploration and production company Aker BP to deploy Spot, the quadruped robotic dog, to pioneer the remote controlled offshore mission on the Skarv installation, 210 kilometers offshore in the North Sea.

The effort continues to build upon Aker BP and Cognite’s bold digital agenda to transform the industry through digitalization, which will result in improved efficiency, safety, and sustainability offshore. This recent endeavor signals a significant opportunity to transform the oil and gas industry worldwide.

Aker BP is committed to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all, and using robotics is a strong part of this vision. Spot’s work offshore is the next step in his journey as he was issued his official employee number in February at the Aker BP Capital Markets Day. In addition Aker BP has a number of other projects involving drones and additional mobile robots to deliver on their vision of optimized remote operations using Cognite’s data driven technology.

Cognite’s main software product, Cognite Data Fusion (CDF), served as the data infrastructure for the offshore test which collected images, scans, and sensors from robotics systems and then shared the data across Aker BP via a dashboard to make it actionable. Tasks included: autonomous inspection, high-quality data capture, and automatic report generation. These data insights provide onshore operators with telepresence on offshore installations allowing them complete realtime mission planning and help drive crucial activities.

The mobility of Spot offshore, and the communication between Spot, Cognite Data Fusion and Aker BP was both verified and tested. Data from Spot was available and sorted in Cognite Data Fusion in milliseconds, and Spot was remote controlled from a Cognite home office onshore demonstrating how robots and digital twins can have synergies and enhance each other. In addition, data from an operator round was collected to analyze if the sensor-stack on Spot was sufficient to comply with the proposed task.

“We are eager to explore how robotics systems can make offshore operations safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. The Spot offshore visit at the Skarv FPSO is one small step towards Aker BP’s vision to digitalize all our operations from cradle to grave to increase productivity, enhance quality, and improve the safety of our employees,” said Karl Johnny Hersvik, CEO of Aker BP.

“Missions like these demonstrate Spot’s value in difficult environments. Cognite continues to excel in testing and validating Spot’s ability to reduce risk to humans and provide value in the energy industry,” said Michael Perry, Vice President of Business Development at Boston Dynamics.

“This historic pairing of minds and machines working together to solve industry problems demonstrates that data driven decisions can change industry now,” said Dr. John Markus Lervik, CEO of Cognite. “This ability to guide Spot by remote control is a huge step forward for the industry and something we will continue to work closely with our partners on as we continue to innovate and provide data driven solutions.”

Cognite Data Fusion (CDF) is a cloud-based industrial data operations and intelligence platform, and it integrates seamlessly with existing IT and OT applications in the cloud, edge, and on-premise. CDF contextually enriches industrial data, providing an open, unified industrial data model that is easily accessible for humans and applications, enabling better analytical operations and data-driven decisions.