A Hybrid Approach to Closed-loop Directional Drilling Control using Rotary Steerable Systems

This paper proposes the use of a hybrid approach to perform the trajectory control in the oil drilling industry using Rotary Steerable Systems (RSS). Two levels of automation are proposed, the attitude control (Level 1) regulating inclination and azimuth downhole and the outer loop (Level 2), that monitors the performance of the inner loop and controls the directional drilling commands issued to the tool in order to follow a pre-defined plan. The attitude controller was developed using various simulation techniques including Hardware in the Loop, which implements the dynamical model of the regulated variables downhole. This approach guarantees the reliability of the embedded software implemented in the RSS tool.