Autonomous Trenchless Horizontal Directional Drilling

Over the past 25 years trenchless technology has flourished in many pipeline installation applications as water industry, sanitary sewer, and natural gas pipeline industry. Trenchless technology gained more popularity than open trench due to its economic and environmental factors, it facilitates the installation, replacement, or rehabilitation of underground utility systems with minimum disruption of the surface. Different trenchless installation techniques have been developed over the years but Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) technique is commonly used for pipelines installation beneath buildings, forests, or lakes without excavation or at least minimum digging due to its steering capability. HDD reduces environmental impact to accomplish the installation process and minimizes the drilling time and cost. Quad Motor Drilling Heads (QMDH) were recently proposed to achieve smooth and intuitive directional drilling. A QMDH uses four drilling bits, independently controlled by 4 downhole motors. In this work a real-time control and optimization of the QMDH is simulated and extensively evaluated under various drilling scenarios. The control commands include the angular velocity and torque of each of the 4 motors. The real-time control is updated at regular distance intervals. The proposed control algorithm selects the drilling parameters in order to minimize the time of the drilling process and the deviation from the target trajectory.