Development of A New Automated Pipe Handling System

Abstract

The recent offshore exploration drilling has been made in deeper sea and in higher latitude where the environmental conditions are much severer. This has given rise to such problems as the decrease in drilling efficiency and the increase in the workers' danger. In these conditions, there is an increasing tendency to adoption of various automated systems which will be helpful to improve the drilling efficiency and the drilling safety. From this point of view, the authors are developing an automatcd pipe handling system of a new concept. This paper introduces this new concept of the automated pipe handling system, together with the test results of a half size partial model of this system.