The Drillbotics 2026 competition has now concluded, with strong results from student teams around the world working on autonomous drilling systems in both physical and virtual modes.

As in previous years, the Virtual Mode contest used OpenLab Drilling as the simulation environment. This gives student teams access to realistic drilling simulator data and a standardized interface for developing, testing, and demonstrating their concepts in a safe and reproducible setting.

The 2026 Virtual Mode winner was the collaboration between Palawan State University (the Philippines) and Sunway University (Malaysia). Their team developed a well control and kick detection solution and demonstrated accurate kick detection with recommended operational responses during a blind surprise test.

The University of Mines and Technology in Ghana, earned runner-up honors in Virtual Mode. Their prototype demonstrated interoperability by ingesting live simulator data from OpenLab Drilling during the competition.

In physcial mode, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA) (Argentina) won the strong competition, while TU Clausthal (Germany) and NTNU (Norway) shared second place.

We congratulate all participating teams in Drillbotics 2026. The results show how OpenLab Drilling can support education, research, and innovation worldwide in drilling technologies by giving students and researchers a practical environment for testing new ideas before moving toward real-world implementation.