With support from Tecpetrol, the team of aspiring engineers became the first Latin American representatives to take home the competition’s top international prize. “We back young talent and give it room to grow,” says Felipe Harriague, Tecpetrol’s Talent Attraction Manager.

Students from the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA) took first place in Drillbotics 2026, the international competition organized by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the professional association that brings together engineers, scientists and technical professionals from across the oil and gas industry. “At Tecpetrol, we support initiatives like this because there’s no better way to learn than by tackling real-world challenges,” says Felipe Harriague, the company’s Talent Attraction Manager.

The competition brings together students from universities from around the world. The challenge is to design and build a scaled-down drilling rig equipped with sensors and control algorithms that allow it to operate autonomously, while also responding to technical issues in real time. In the Physical Mode category (which refers to actual models built to scale), the ITBA team outperformed their peers from Clausthal University of Technology in Germany and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

“Seeing these students take an idea, turn it into a working project and then compete at this level against some of the world’s top universities was incredibly inspiring. Drillbotics gives them the chance to put what they’ve learned into practice, solve complex problems and work together as a team—exactly the kind of experience they’ll need in the industry. It also gives them the freedom to experiment, ask questions and come up with new ideas,” Harriague says.

A multidisciplinary, real-time challenge

This was the first time a Latin American team had entered the competition—and they went on to take first place in what’s considered to be one of the industry’s most demanding contests for automation and robotics applied to the energy sector.

Work on the project began in December 2025 and continued for several months. The judges singled out the team’s professional approach to execution and project management and their ability to diagnose and solve problems on the spot during the live demonstration.

The project brought together students from Petroleum, Mechanical and Electronic Engineering. Guided by faculty members, team members were Augusto Storani, Chiara Alexandra Bortolot, Martiniano Federico Leguizamón, Conrado Besel Stur, Matías Hernán Felizia, Julieta Luz Bó, Andrea Belén Enricci Louzán, Julieta Goldbaum, Álvaro González Christiansen, Juan Ignacio García Vautrin Raggio, Juan Ignacio Cantarella and Augusto Felipe Ospal Madeo.

In addition to taking home the global title, the team was invited to present its project results at the 2027 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference & Exhibition, a headline event on the global oil and gas calendar, to be held in Stavanger, Norway, next March.

“We want talented young people to have opportunities to learn, experiment and grow. At Tecpetrol, we encourage them to bring new ideas to the table, explore new technologies and take on real challenges. That’s exactly what the industry needs: curious people who ask questions, challenge assumptions and know how to work with others to find solutions,” Harriague concludes.