Why was "oil and gas exploration" an early adopter here? Can anyone connect the dots for me?
I wouldn't expect interesting oil/gas pockets to have <5m lateral diameter, but then again I know very little about that industry.
I wouldn't expect interesting oil/gas pockets to have <5m lateral diameter, but then again I know very little about that industry.
Also drilling is done to extremely high precision these days.
Edit: Bare in mind the industry uses differtial GPS for some tasks - this can give mm/cm precision.
There's a ton of money in oil/gas, and any technology that can give a slight edge is often worth it. For example, oil and gas companies were some of the first to use Iridium (worldwide satellite internet at ridiculous prices), and I'd bet that they are the biggest users of the Iridium network to this day. This goes for inventions in tons of fields.
For example, new breakthrough in diving: great, you can use that to work on underwater parts of drilling rigs. New breakthrough in robotics? Great, you can replace the expensive and dangerous dive crews with underwater ROVs. New breakthrough in geology? Cool, you can use it to find oil.