Saudi Aramco's Robots

Saudi Aramco's Robots are technologies that assist the company in providing safer and more efficient inspection capabilities. They enable early detection of leaks, support aerial mapping, underwater welding, and environmental monitoring, and inspect assets such as drilling equipment and offshore pipelines in hard-to-reach locations.

It is an intelligent robot designed for monitoring and inspecting in shallow waters. It has the capability to inspect materials underwater, enhancing the speed, efficiency, and safety of pipeline inspections.

The company's Research and Development Center invented the 'Swim-R' inspection and monitoring robot for shallow waters, which uses advanced technology to overcome many of the challenges faced by the oil and gas sector.

Inspecting pipelines in shallow waters involves complex challenges, as divers perform inspections while connected to a support vessel or diving support boat via a supply line used to provide oxygen and facilitate live video camera signal transmission for communication.

In situations where navigating a diving support boat in shallow waters is difficult due to the risk of striking the seabed or encountering underwater obstacles, alternative methods such as inflatable boats are used for pipeline inspection. However, these methods are slower compared to deep-water inspections. The SWIM-R robot enhances the safety and efficiency of pipeline inspections in shallow waters, and significantly reducing the time and costs associated with these inspections.

SWIM-R was designed, developed, and field-tested in less than two years, resulting in its deployment five months ahead of schedule. The robot's innovation led to eleven patents, with seven patents granted for its protection.

Saudi Aramco also holds a patent for the 'SAIR' inspection robot, a magnetic crawler capable of performing visual inspections of steel surfaces that are inaccessible under normal conditions. It can also conduct ultrasonic thickness measurements and detect the presence of gas, significantly reducing potential risks, inspection time, and the costs associated with erecting scaffolding on spherical tanks used in inspections.

'SAIR' robot is an advanced, self-operating, and wireless inspection robot that offers high levels of maneuverability while inspecting steel surfaces, including those with curvatures and bends.

Development work on robots also includes a robot specifically for cleaning solar panels, which are a cost-effective, sustainable, and reliable source of energy. To address this, the Smart Systems team at Saudi Aramco developed a robotic technology to reduce dust accumulation. This low-cost technology minimizes the negative impact of dust on solar panel productivity. This technology has earned three patents and has been licensed to the startup company NOMADD.

The dry-cleaning robot operates automatically, performing cleaning tasks based on preset schedules or specific commands. This technology is both cost-effective and reliable, even under harsh and dry climatic conditions similar to those in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Aramco continues its scientific research to enhance its operational activities through innovative solutions that align with production and service technologies across its various sectors. In response to the need for sustainable and intelligent technical solutions, its researchers have developed a robot to calibrate oil tank volumes and measure the quantity of oil sold accurately using laser beams. This technology improves the calibration process in a periodic and safe manner, with a device mounted at the bottom of the tank sending vertical laser beams to the robot to complete the calibration.

The tank calibration robot improves inspection quality and reduces the calibration time from sixteen hours to just four hours. To create additional value and provide opportunities for local business sectors in the Kingdom, the company commercializes several of these technologies commercially at local, regional, and international levels.