OpenLab facilitates and accelerates the demonstration of DWIS and autonomous drilling at Ullrigg

The recent DWIS (Drilling and Wells Interoperability Standard) demonstration at NORCE’s Ullrigg Test Center from 2. - 6. March 2026 showed the unique capabilities and efficient workflow of OpenLab in practice. An important part of the successful demonstration was the extensive use of OpenLab's HIL (Hardware-In-The-Loop) simulator before and during the Ullrigg demo. You can read more about the Ullrigg demonstration here.

NORCE and partners of the DigiWells Innovation Program recently completed a successful field demonstration of the DWIS platform combined with autonomous drilling capabilities at the Ullrigg test center. OpenLab's unique HIL-simulator was used extensively before and during this demo. A key advantage is that it has the same control system and setup as Ullrigg, which makes it easy to switch from OpenLab to Ullrigg, accelerating the testing and qualification of new technology to higher TRL- Technology Readiness Level.

The objective of this test was to demonstrate autonomous drilling together with real-time interoperability, involving multiple vendor systems, and to validate DWIS as a common data infrastructure for drilling automation. The systems exchanged data via the DWIS Blackboard architecture, enabling applications to discover and use signals automatically. The Blackboard and technologies from different vendors were first connected in OpenLab with the embedded NOV control system and NOVOS, before testing at Ullrigg.

The setup with OpenLab HIL with NOV and NOVOS provides a replica of Ullrigg that makes development, testing, and demonstration far more efficient. Much of the required work can be done in OpenLab before arriving at the test facility, and the same environment can continue to support the work during the full-scale test at Ullrigg. This combination of realism, interoperability, and flexibility is a strong example of how OpenLab accelerates the development of advanced drilling automation solutions.

The Ullrigg demonstration involved contributions from multiple organizations and services, including NOV, Sekal, Halliburton, and NORCE, among others. The sponsors of the DigiWells Innovation Program are Aker BP, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Petrobras, TotalEnergies, and Vår Energi.