A CNet blogger reports that iRobot, maker of the Roomba as well as military robots, is looking to advance robots in oil exploration.

Exploration is dirty and dangerous. When I was in the field, I had to leave my wedding ring and watch off so that they wouldn’t get hooked on equipment and cost me a finger or worse.

I could see where robots would increase safety not only keeping people from being injured but also in improving coordination of where and how heavy equipment is used. It wouldn’t replace humans altogether, because people are still need to react to crazy conditions such as pressure kicks from down below and wind gusts up above.

I am not sure what the blogger means by:

But later holes can upset the geological formations. A robot would in theory repair the holes and move on to the next ones without upsetting the geological balance. Conceivably, the robots could allow drillers to extract more oil out of deposits. Now, they only harvest part of it.

I would have liked a little more detail here, how it would from the way we do things now. We can get quite automated downhole today, necessarily because we haven’t found a way to fit humans in a 4½” hole.