Tuesday, 8 April 2025 / Edition 53

This week’s edition covers two topics that reinforce the idea, “Collaboration is key.” Whether it's companies combining forces to create a new technology or a group of AI-powered robots working together to more effectively monitor and power a single system, oftentimes in innovation, all the old adages seem to apply: The more the merrier, two heads are better than one, teamwork makes the dream work, etc. Let’s take a look.

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

An AI-Powered Trifecta

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Great things can develop when technologies combine in smart ways. Dutch company SBM Offshore has recently entered into a global partnership with Microsoft to expedite development of AI-powered and carbon-free, floating power solutions. Wow, that’s a lot of qualifiers. I’m sure the industry will soon come up with an acronym or short hand for that, but until then….

Why it matters: On the surface, Microsoft partnering with SBM Offshore sounds like just two companies combining forces, but SBM also has investments in Norwegian company Ocean Power.

Project goals:

• The collaboration aims to accelerate the adoption of floating power-generation units to meet the growing demand for clean, reliable, and dispatchable electricity.

• It also hopes to overcome some of the barriers of conventional efforts to decarbonize industrial energy use.

• Finally, its broader goals are to enhance system reliability, optimize energy efficiency, and reduce operating costs.

The trifecta provides potential for a powerful solution:

• Ocean Power specializes in floating combined cycle power plants, which provide power to either nearby offshore platforms or an onshore grid.

• SBM Offshore has expertise in post-combustion carbon capture and has modules designed for offshore use. After CO2 is captured, it is directly injected into a nearby geological formation or pipeline, or it’s transported as a liquid for use or permanent storage.

• Microsoft, of course, has AI technology that can analyze conditions and drive efficiencies by customizing operations for those changing conditions.

Key technological innovations include:

• AI-powered asset lifecycle assessments (tech that tells companies the environmental impact of a given product, process, or service throughout various stages of its lifecycle)

• Real-time carbon measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV), as well as predictive maintenance.

These features will be powered by various Microsoft products, including Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, and Fabric.

Geoscientists have all kinds of roles to play here, but especially in the analysis of the CO2 reservoir for injection!

Learn more information here and here.

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The Swarm Robots are Coming!

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The drive to improve oil field safety is strong. Much of what’s been done so far relates to AI analyses and having humans make adjustments to help prevent dangerous situations.

Having a robot onsite to do any real work is an idea most of us are not likely to entertain anytime soon, but the reality might arrive sooner than we think.

Driving the news: The manufacturing and automotive industries are playing around with swarm intelligence. Is it a giant swarm of enemy robot bees from a sci-fi movie? No, but you have to admit that it kind of sounds like it.

What is swarm intelligence?

• Basically, a given unit within an AI-powered system has its own intelligence built in, but it also has access to a larger networked system that communicates and allows the robot to work in unison with other robots.

• Imagine this to be like an acapella group: Each vocalist has their own musical part, but they can also hear all the other members of the group singing, and use that information to complement, or sing in unison with, some or all of the group.

There’s a lot of running room for this technology, because it offers capabilities like:

• Collaborative sorting: Using vision-based perception and hybrid decision-making systems, the AI optimizes sorting tasks by dynamically tracking targets and sharing intelligence across the swarm.

• Handling heavy loads: We have all dropped large furniture while moving, because managing a heavy and awkwardly large object is tricky. Uneven load distribution and complex trajectories can be hard for robots to handle, too. But, as with humans, the more hands involved, the better. Stability and efficiency is improved by enabling robots to adjust posture and force dynamically throughout the swarm.

• Precision assembly: In delicate tasks such as handling deformable materials, tactile sensing and adaptive control ensure precision without damaging components.

Oil and gas applications: This tech is starting out in manufacturing, but I could easily imagine it transitioning to our industry.

Picture robots on a rig who, between several of them, could have real-time access to data downhole, the capability to analyze that data quickly, contemporaneous observation and knowledge of all surface operations, and an ability to communicate and coordinate with human staff onsite.

It’s not going to happen tomorrow or even next year, but it’s something that I think has the potential to make its way to the field, likely sooner than we think.

To learn more about swarm intelligence, look here.

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