Coming Soon: Digital Tally Book for Oil and Gas Installations

Imagine having procedures for a casing annulus packer (CAP) and being able to move through each functional step just by saying “next.”

Google Glass is essentially a development platform in the form of “smart” glasses, and has similar functions of a smartphone or tablet. Since 2012, Google has released the device to developers via the Google Glass Explorers Program to ignite application development for the platform.

One of those explorers is David Vaucher, a petroleum engineer and co-founder of Wearadyne, a company focused on delivering wearable technology solutions for the oil and gas industry. Vaucher recently combined efforts with two other glass “explorers” with a specialty in platform development.

Vaucher’s goal is to create an off-the-shelf application for oil and gas, called the Digital Tally Book. “We don't want to follow the path of being ‘everything to everyone.’ There are so many applications for wearable technology in so many industries that we couldn't possibly cover them all well,” says Vaucher.

Vaucher envisions a great opportunity with the wearable device for job procedure functions. With the oil and gas example, he believes a company could have multiple templates corresponding to all its different tools stored on a cloud server. An engineer picks a particular procedure and also could modify it on a tablet, then send it directly to Google Glass. The engineer leaves the tablet in the truck and this allows for hands-free working at the wellhead or on the rig floor. 

The app would also be a  “closed-loop” solution, not just novelty. When wearing the technology at the wellhead, Google Glass could collect data and edit during the work procedure, and push the final job report back to the enterprise network.  

>>Read Automation World's complete coverage: Flexibility Within Limits: Global Standards, Best Practices Challenge U.S. Multinationals