Panel Factory 1 at the HD Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard in Dong-gu, Ulsan, visited on the 5th. A robot hanging from an overhead crane descended to the factory floor, throwing white sparks as it welded. The robot doing the smoky welding was a “panel-slit robot.” Right next to it, two collaborative robots fixed to the floor moved left and right, doing the same job.
There were no human workers around where the panel-slit robot was welding. Using preloaded information on the welding target, the robot was working autonomously until all welding was finished, with no human intervention.
According to HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, one on-site worker can achieve the productivity of six workers when using the panel-slit robot. While collaborative robots require a worker to step in and adjust positions each time the weld finishes, the panel-slit robot can reposition itself, delivering a bigger productivity gain. With collaborative robots, one worker’s productivity rises to the level of 1.5 people.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is speeding up shipyard automation. About 75% of in-yard processes—such as steel cutting, welding, and block assembly—are automated. Not only welding but also detailed reinforcement work, like rounding edges so paint spreads evenly on steel plates, is automated. The company has also built Twinforce, a platform that reproduces the shipyard in 3D so production status can be monitored in real time.
Early next year, the company plans to release its first “physical AI” model for welding. The model allows AI to recognize and judge welding conditions and environments—such as voltage—in real time and perform the work on its own.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries plans to use robots equipped with this model to raise automation in out-yard processes. Unlike in-yard work, where the target objects and environments are standardized, out-yard processes are seen as hard to automate. Out-yard work assembles ship blocks, but each vessel uses blocks of different sizes and shapes, and complex geometries—such as the curved bow and stern—make automation difficult. Out-yard automation now stands at about 15%.
Shin Sang-beom, an executive director at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, said, “The key is how many solutions you have for unstructured tasks rather than structured ones,” adding, “Our goal is to boost productivity in welding by more than 30% by 2030 compared with today and cut costs by more than 10%.” The price gap in new orders between Chinese and Korean shipyards is generally known to be about 10%. The strategy is to narrow that gap through automation.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is pushing its Future of Shipyard (FOS) project to link every step from ship design to production with data and raise productivity by about 30% by 2030. Starting next year, it will increase robot adoption and deploy a total of 3,000 robots at the Ulsan shipyard and HD Hyundai Samho’s Yeongam shipyard in South Jeolla by 2030.
Key challenges ahead to raise automation include tack-fitting and logistics. Tack-fitting fixes steel plates or structures in place to match design drawings before final welding. Long ship members sway or move unpredictably when lifted. Because it is hard for robots to predict that movement and fix parts in the exact position, automation rates are low.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is in talks with Nvidia to collaborate on a model for automating tack-fitting. It is also developing technology to move larger and heavier steel plates and ship blocks than logistics robots such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can handle.
Shin said, “If you only count the number of robots deployed in shipyards, China is far ahead—that’s the reality,” adding, “HD Hyundai Heavy Industries can differentiate itself because we have simulation technology that captures various physical phenomena in the shipyard through workers’ data and know-how, which are core to physical AI.”
This article was produced with support from the Sea’s Embrace Foundation and the Korea Maritime Journalists Association.
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