China State Shipbuilding Corp is training specialist artificial intelligence models to interpret technical rules, analyse specifications and extract information from existing vessel blueprints, according to China Daily.
Gu Yiqing, deputy chief engineer at CSSC’s Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute, or SDARI, said the smaller models must be refined before they can be integrated into a larger system.
The shipbuilder is testing AI tools to compare design standards and verify vessel parameters, while all output remains subject to checks by specialist engineering teams. “Full reliance on AI for design work is not feasible at this stage,” Gu said.
She said AI could eventually organise drawings and technical documents, create specialist semantic databases, improve design efficiency and optimise design outcomes.
Consolidating China’s shipbuilding data and preparing it for model training remains a major technical challenge.
CSSC presented the work at an AI and maritime industry forum in Shanghai on 18 July attended by more than 200 researchers and company representatives from China and overseas.
The group unveiled 10 AI-related technologies and 10 potential applications. The technologies included an end-to-end autonomous-navigation system, digital ship-performance testing, an enterprise knowledge engine, an autonomous-navigation dataset and an AI chief engineer system.
Potential applications included automated generation and optimisation of ship concepts, intelligent arrangement of complex vessel spaces, AI-assisted machinery commissioning, robotic coating and digital safety monitoring in confined shipboard spaces.
Gu previously led design work on Dazhi, the first smart ship to receive classification certification, and served as chief system architect for Ningyuan Diankun, the world’s largest pure-electric smart containership with open-water autonomous-navigation technology.
The former China State Shipbuilding Corp and China Shipbuilding Industry Corp were centrally administered Chinese state-owned shipbuilding groups combined in November 2019 to establish the current CSSC. The enterprise has total assets of CNY 1.1235tn ($165.4bn), 182,800 employees, 34 research institutes and 11 controlled listed companies.