Inconsistent directional drilling performance has cost the oil and gas industry billions of dollars in drilling costs, missed production potential, and increased lifting costs. While some directional drillers perform at a high-level, others often fail to properly compensate for multiple variables seen while drilling. Automation of the directional drilling service including automated decision-making is proving to be a viable solution to this problem and has been implemented in the drilling of thousands of wells in North America in recent years.

A joint industry project (JIP) affiliated with the IADC (International Association of Drilling Contractors), SPE DSATS (Society of Petroleum Engineers Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section), AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International), Southwest Research Institute, Energistics, and the OPC (Open Platform Communications) Foundation has created a Drilling Systems Automation (DSA) Roadmap to help the industry understand the direction of drilling systems automation. In this roadmap, the authors suggest that the transition from humans to automation in the general drilling space can occur across four cognitive functions: acquiring information, analyzing and displaying information, deciding action, and implementing action. They also suggest that there is value in partial automation.