COVER STORY
Woodside Energy has integrated Spot into its operations to enhance safety at its largest LNG facility
programme to identify any anomalies. Spot is not only aiding Chevron in
existing inspection processes but also advancing them. Previously, operators would walk the sites and rely on their senses to analyse equipment, listening for unusual sounds or detecting excessive heat. “With Spot, we can take precise measurements of acoustics and temperatures, and then track that data over time,” says Zach Pringnitz, a robotics engineer at the Chevron Technical Centre. Boston Dynamics also collaborated
with Chevron to develop an industry- specific safety feature for Spot: a sensor that detects the presence of explosive gas. When Spot senses the gas, it immediately sits down and shuts off, reducing the risk of a spark from the robot igniting the gas. This new safety feature enables Chevron to use Spot autonomously in hazardous and electrically classified areas. Chris McCasky at Boston Dynamics
says that Chevron’s investment in Spot demonstrates the company’s commitment to technology and innovation. “Robotics have become essential to this industry – they
assist with worker safety, help clean up operations, and meet consumers’ energy demands. In short, robots are empowering more efficient and effective ways of working.”
THE ‘SPECTOR’ PROJECT Located on a remote stretch of coastline in northwestern Australia lies one of the most technologically advanced liquified natural gas (LNG) production facilities in the world. The Pluto LNG facility is a towering maze of pipes, platforms, and machinery with capacity to produce 4.9 million tonnes of LNG each year from two offshore gas fields. Given the scale of operations at Pluto
LNG and the site’s critical importance to the region, it is important to reduce downtime. This requires early and frequent identification of potential problems before they escalate. Woodside turned to Boston Dynamics and Spot to help address this. Woodside launched a data capture
service at Pluto LNG featuring the robot, which Woodside calls ‘Spector’. It conducts routine inspections throughout the site and reduces the
exposure of operators to potential hazards. Images captured by Spector have helped experts at Woodside complete regulatory visual inspections for electrical equipment under the company’s performance standards. The oil and gas production
company has also partnered with Boston Dynamics and software company DroneDeploy to create a platform called ‘FUSE’. This platform – which combines Spector with Woodside’s in-house digital twin of the Pluto LNG facility – allows operators and analysts to pinpoint the exact location of issues within a virtual environment. Before the Spector programme,
it took up to 90 minutes to find equipment and complete an end-to- end visual inspection. But experts at Woodside say that with Spector, inspectors can review images first to determine their response and then bring exactly what they need. “One of the biggest benefits of the robot- captured images is that they can be used to identify issues before arriving in the field,” says Bruce Hill, electrical inspection coordinator at Woodside.
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