Tag: robotics

Pro­du­cers are increas­ingly turn­ing to new advances in auto­ma­tion

This article was written by Lauren Krugel and was published in the Toronto Star on May 13, 2025.

Haul trucks, shovels, pumps and pipes are com­mon sights at Imper­ial Oil’s vast oils­ands oper­a­tions in north­east­ern Alberta, but so too are robots and drones, with gen­er­at­ive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence a newer addi­tion to the tech­no­lo­gical mix.

“We’ve been laser­focused on this digital jour­ney since 2018,” Cheryl Gomez­Smith, the senior exec­ut­ive in charge of Imper­ial’s pro­duc­tion, told a recent investor con­fer­ence.

Gomez­Smith said as of last year, Imper­ial’s bot­tom line has seen a $700­mil­lion boost from high­tech ini­ti­at­ives — and that’s on track to rise to $1.2 bil­lion by 2027. The com­pany has an in­house team ded­ic­ated to ramp­ing up new tech­no­lo­gies, and also draws on expert­ise from its U.S. major­ity owner Exxon­Mobil Corp.

For the past few years, Imper­ial has been using self­driv­ing haul trucks at its Kearl oils­ands mine. It has also enlis­ted Spot, a four­legged robot developed by Boston Dynam­ics that bears an eerie resemb­lance to a dog, for routine inspec­tions and main­ten­ance at Cold Lake, an oils­ands site in east­ern Alberta that uses steam wells to extract bitu­men.

“We estim­ate Spot can con­duct almost 70 per cent of some oper­ator rounds, allow­ing us to real­loc­ate oper­ator and main­ten­ance resources to higher value work,” Gomez­Smith said.

“We cur­rently have two Spots at site. We have two more inbound for deliv­ery at this quarter, so we’re well on our way to hav­ing a lit­ter.”

Imper­ial is build­ing on those advance­ments by expand­ing into gen­er­at­ive AI, Gomez­Smith said.

“This is where we’re chat­ting with our own data to allow oper­a­tions to gain real­time insights to drive bet­ter and faster decisions.”

At Cold Lake, remote piloted drones are help­ing save money on main­ten­ance and they’re on the brink of being AI­enabled. Sensors with AI cap­ab­il­it­ies are also help­ing auto­mate pump­jack speed at the site in order to boost effi­ciency.

Shan­non Wilson, who leads the energy divi­sion at IBM Canada, said the oil and gas industry has been using auto­ma­tion for a long time and it’s begin­ning to “take it to the next level” by incor­por­at­ing AI.

In addi­tion to bol­ster­ing auto­ma­tion already on site, Wilson said AI is being used to improve pro­ductiv­ity by quickly sift­ing through or com­pil­ing reams of inform­a­tion — tasks that would have oth­er­wise been time con­sum­ing for work­ers. It’s also been help­ful in mon­it­or­ing oper­a­tions and bet­ter plan­ning main­ten­ance activ­it­ies, redu­cing down­time.

Lar­ger com­pan­ies have the scale to invest in their own in­house tech­no­logy, while smal­ler ones are tak­ing advant­age of com­mer­cial offer­ings, Wilson said.

“There’s cre­ativ­ity hap­pen­ing in the mar­ket­place and they’re buy­ing the embed­ded solu­tions from some of their exist­ing ser­vice pro­viders.”

Wilson called AI a tool to “aug­ment” human intel­li­gence.

“Ulti­mately, humans are the decision­makers,” she said. “The more repeat­able a pro­cess is, the more AI can lend itself.”