Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) is expanding its digital transformation strategy through new collaborations in extended reality (XR) and robotics, aimed at accelerating the development of smart shipyards and advancing shipbuilding automation.
The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with sister company Samsung Electronics for the use of XR technology, releasing a demonstration video outlining the potential applications in ship inspections using the newly announced Galaxy XR headset.
The video featured an LNG carrier engine inspection in a 3D environment using passthrough and hand-tracking capabilities powered by the headset device.
The collaboration builds on SHI’s existing use of virtual reality (VR) tools for workforce training and design review. The company says it plans to integrate multimodal AI, high-performance video see-through, and advanced rendering capabilities into future XR platforms to create more interactive and intelligent visualisation systems for design, inspection, and operations.
“With this cooperation, Samsung Electronics XR Technology will fuse Samsung Heavy Industries’ ship construction site utilisation solution and content development know-how to accelerate the implementation of smart shipyards and contribute to strengthening ship manufacturing competitiveness,” said Lee Dong Yeon, Vice President at the Marine Research Institute of Samsung Heavy Industries (translated from Korean).
In parallel, SHI has also signed a separate agreement with robotics firm Rainbow Robotics to co-develop AI-enabled shipbuilding robots, focusing on the deployment of welding robots capable of operating autonomously inside ship blocks and on inclined surfaces. Samsung Electronics is the largest single shareholder in Rainbow Robotics, having invested more than US$240 million in acquiring a 35% stake in the company over the last two years.
SHI will provide welding process data and testing facilities under the partnership, while Rainbow Robotics will contribute its robot hardware and technical development. The goal is to create lightweight, mobile dual-arm, and quadruped robots for shipbuilding activities.
Fellow Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai announced a similar deal earlier this year with robotics firm Persona AI to develop AI-enabled humanoid robots capable of high-precision welding.
