HD Hyundai Samho is Making Serious Plans to Install Humanoid Robots
Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai Samho says that it is studying ways to introduce humanoid robots into its yard, and is examining ROI to figure out where it might make the most sense to use them.
The yard tested out humanoids in a demonstration event last year, using them to move items and carry out welding. An early demonstration trial video showed a humanoid robot interacting with a forklift.
The yard has assistance from HD Hyundai's own robot division, plus Neura Robotics and LG CNS. The expectation is that the devices will initially be useful for low-level tasks, and that further trials and training evolutions will bring them further up the value chain. The hope is to begin a physical rollout in 2027, and to provide intensive employee training on AI tools in advance.
Robotics are an essential part of South Korean shipyards' strategy for competing with China, the world leader in shipbuilding. South Korea's domestic labor force is constrained by demographics and by generational preferences, and the nation's yards have turned to immigrant labor from Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere to make up the gap. As of 2024, about 16 percent of the nation's shipyard workforce were foreign workers, and the overwhelming majority of new hires at Korean shipyards were foreigners with temporary-worker visas - a trend set to continue. Robots are another way to plug the hole in workforce availability, and could help Korean firms expand into the U.S. market, where skilled labor is also scarce.
Humanoid robots have the advantage of being able to interact with an environment designed for humans, but as a platform, they have technical challenges to overcome. Any mobile device in a shipyard has to navigate changing site layouts, walk on uneven surfaces and survive dust and weather conditions. Alternatively, small single-purpose robots that de-skill the task of welding - but leave the human in the yard - have been tried out at DSME and HD Hyundai, to good effect. A co-bot welding-arm device employs a human worker to carry, place and set up the arm; the arm does the skilled welding while the worker performs another task. An analogous large-scale setup is in production use in HD Hyundai's panel assembly lines, where four-legged, self-mobile robots have found a home in a semi-structured environment with intermittent supervision.
