Smart Zone Management System for Automated Drilling Rig Collision Prevention
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Solution Overview
Problem
Automated systems, such as drilling rigs, face challenges in preventing collisions between independently moving objects due to complex geometries and potential operator errors, leading to reduced efficiency and increased risk of accidents.
Innovation Solution
The Smart Zone Management System (SZMS) tracks geometrical objects' position data and establishes rules for relative movements, using dynamic boxes representing machines and incorporating safety distances and a programmable logic controller to prevent collisions by ensuring machines stop or slow down before colliding, while allowing for visual operator intervention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If operators manually monitor and control object movements, then collision risk can be reduced through human judgment, but system efficiency and speed are significantly reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual operator monitoring and control with an automated computer-based collision prevention system. The system uses sensors to detect object positions, a processor to calculate collision risks based on stored geometric data, and automated control signals to prevent collisions, thereby maintaining high system efficiency while ensuring safety.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables automated self-monitoring and self-protection by having machines equipped with sensors and processors that continuously track their own positions and those of other objects, automatically calculating collision risks and implementing preventive actions without human intervention.
2Reliability
If large safety margins are maintained between moving objects, then collision risk is reduced, but system speed and operational efficiency are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts safety distances based on real-time conditions. The processor continuously calculates collision risks using current position data, velocity, and geometric information, allowing objects to operate at minimum safe distances rather than maintaining fixed large safety margins, thereby maximizing system speed while preventing collisions.
3Measurement precision
If complex geometric shapes of objects are precisely tracked, then accurate collision prediction is achieved, but calculation complexity and processing power requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-storing geometric data and characteristic parameters of all objects in the system before operations begin. This pre-processing of geometric information allows the processor to quickly assess collision risks during operations without performing complex real-time geometric calculations, thereby maintaining measurement precision while reducing computational complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
This invention relates to a system for controlling the movements of objects in an automated or remote operated system, as well as a related method and use of the system comprising independent transporting means for moving a number of objects relative to each other, the system being providing with means for controlling the position and velocity of the objects relative to each other. Each object is related to a defined geometric shape related to the object positions having dimensions corresponding to or exceeding the physical dimensions of the object in all directions, and also defining a critical allowed distance between the defined geometric shapes.