Patent attributes
A drilling system for drilling a subterranean well bore includes a controller and a first and a second set of field devices. Each of the first and second set of field devices measure a physical characteristic of the drilling system and to transmit to the controller signals representing a measured value of the physical characteristic. The controller is programmed to use a first set of algorithms to process the signals received from the first set of field devices to determine if the measured values represented by the signals indicate that there might have been an influx of formation fluid into the subterranean well bore, and a second set of algorithms to process the signals received from the second set of field devices to determine if the measured values represented by the signals indicate that there might have been an influx of formation fluid into the subterranean well bore.