Source: The CHOSUN Daily
HD Hyundai Group strives to embody its AI ecosystem by restructuring the AI divisions within the subsidiaries.
HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE), an intermediate holding of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HD HHI), has recently unified its various artificial intelligence (AI) entities, which were previously dispersed throughout the company. These units have been consolidated into an AI center under the auspices of the KSOE Future Technology Research Institute. Another sub-holding of the group, HD Hyundai XiteSolution, responsible for the heavy equipment business, established a technology center in January of last year. This center aims to consolidate the technology development functions previously carried out independently by its subsidiaries.
HD Hyundai plans to utilize AI technology to speed up digital transformation and secure original technologies for future ships and construction machinery. The group plans to complete its Future of Shipyard (FOS) project by 2030. In December last year, the South Korean conglomerate successfully finished the construction of the “Visible Shipyard,” Phase 1 of the FOS project, and is working on “Connected and Predictive Optimized Shipyard,” Phase 2 of the project, starting this year.
The data platform built in Phase 1 sends shipbuilding big data, enabling AI to learn it and make decisions on process management such as manpower, materials, products, and facilities. This is to derive optimal shipyard operating conditions. HD Hyundai aims to make further advances to realize “intelligent autonomous shipyards,” Phase 3 of the FOS project by 2030 to bring a 30% increase in productivity, a 30% improvement in lead time, and zero resource waste.
Furthermore, the big South Korean company is harnessing AI to revolutionize its operations. It intends to optimize work efficiency and expertise by integrating NAVER’s hyperscale AI platform, “HyperCLOVA X” into its extensive database of over 200 million shipbuilding and offshore-related data. Since July of last year, the group has been conducting a pilot project to establish a generative AI service, leveraging Google Cloud, in collaboration with HD Hyundai Construction Equipment’s call center.
HD Hyundai is promoting the development and commercialization of future ships and construction machinery equipped with AI as well. Avikus, an autonomous ship navigation affiliate of the group delivered an LNG-fueled bulker equipped with an AI engineer in August last year and launched “NeuBoat DOCK”, which provides AI-based collision avoidance and automated docking and undocking assistance for leisure boats the very next month. HD Hyundai Vice Chairman and CEO Chung Ki-sun shared the group’s Xite Innovation Vision at CES 2024 held in Las Vegas earlier this year. He revealed “X-Wise,” an AI platform that enables unmanned and autonomous operations using autonomous, digital twin, eco-friendly, electrification, and more future construction equipment technologies, and “X-Wise Xite,” an intelligent site management solution developed for optimal production of infrastructure at the event.
