By Liu Bitao, Shang Jiafa & Jiang Wencheng

As a typical traditional manufacturing industry,the shipping industry is also facing the same situation as most of the traditional industries.On one hand, arti fi cial intelligence will become the main way for the shipbuilding industry to increase production ef fi ciency and reduce business costs. On the other hand,the application of artificial intelligence will change the existing traditional manufacturing model as well as business model.

1. The driving force to reduce cost and increase ef fi ciency

With the fundamental goal of making the machine smarter, the artificial intelligence technology is to increase efficiency and liberate the labor force in a way of using machines instead of mankind. Therefore,reducing costs and increasing ef fi ciency are the inevitable result of the development of arti fi cial intelligence. For the shipping industry, artificial intelligence can be applied to the entire process of design, construction, operation and maintenance, thus promoting the cost reduction and ef fi ciency increase of the industry.

The development and maturity of artificial intelligence technology will make intelligent design possible.Machine learning is an important area of research in arti fi cial intelligence technology. This technology allows the machine to grasp relevant knowledge and carry out relevant work through the “learning” of large amounts of data.

Arti fi cial intelligence technology will be mainly applied in smart shipbuilding. Shipbuilding is a complex process that includes many aspects of work such as manufacturing, management, and logistics. The combination of arti fi cial intelligence technology with the Internet of Things and big data analysis technology will optimize the shipbuilding process, improve the ef fi ciency of shipbuilding, and achieve intelligent manufacturing.For example, through the advanced algorithms of the artificial intelligence as well as the collection and monitoring of ship production process data by using the Internet of Things, the management of production and logistics can be optimized and the production ef fi ciency can be improved. At the same time, the development of robot technology will greatly enhance the intelligence in the manufacturing process. At present, intelligent equipment such as mechanical arms and robots has been generally adopted in shipbuilding industry. South Korea and Japan, which are at the forefront of this aspect, currently have complete systems for intelligent design, production and operation management as well as control systems for ship design and R&D. The performance of welding robots, assembly robots, spraying robots, etc. in shipyards have largely surpassed that of traditional robots.

Smart ships will become hot spots for future arti fi cial intelligence applications. Arti fi cial intelligence technology has been widely used in the fi eld of unmanned cars and has played an important role in image recognition and control algorithms. It is aimed to enhance the identification capacity and processing capacity of intelligent ships through the application of arti fi cial intelligence technology so as to enable ships to navigate autonomously. This is also the long-term goal of the development of smart ships - unmanned ships.At present, a number of smart ships and unmanned ship projects have been launched worldwide, such as the construction project of Green Dolphin 38,800-ton smart demonstration ship led by CSSC, unmanned ship research and development project “MARS” funded by the EU, unmanned ship design project of DNV GL, Korea’s smart ship networking system project of Hyundai Heavy Industry, Korea, and so on. The shipbuilding industry is conducting research on smart ships on a regular basis while the fast development of arti fi cial intelligence may push those projects forward.

2. A subversive of the traditional model

The application of artificial intelligence technology in the shipbuilding industry will significantly improve the operational efficiency of the industry and will also change the traditional industry operating model. On one hand, the development and application of digital technologies such as arti fi cial intelligence will strengthen the links within the industry more closely. Data will become the link between all industry participants such as ship owners, shipyards, ship operators, and inspectors.The control of data will become the focus of the industry in the future, and the shipbuilding industry will move towards platform economy and information economy.For shipbuilding companies, they must integrate the new ecology of the future shipbuilding industry while take the initiative of data, thus avoiding becoming an only manufacturing plant of the industry. On the other hand, as a traditional industry, the shipbuilding industry is relatively weak in the research and development of artificial intelligence technology. As a result, many Internet companies have penetrated the shipbuilding industry with their advantages in artificial intelligence such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM. With the application of arti fi cial intelligence in the shipping fi eld,the existing competitive pattern may be broken.