Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering advances the era of unmanned ships

[Smart City Today]

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, an intermediate holding company of HD Hyundai Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, will join hands with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) to take a step closer to the realization of an "unmanned ship" that can sail without human help as well as operate engines and safety diagnoses.

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding with ABS on institutional automation of autonomous ships, development of integrated safety control systems and demonstration cooperation in Las Vegas on January 6th(local time), where the world's largest IT exhibition was held.

HD Hyundai President Chung Ki-sun, Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Director Kim Sung-joon, and Hyundai Heavy Industries Vice President Jeon Seung-ho attended the signing ceremony, and at ABS, chief executive officer Christopher J. Wiernicki, and Patrick Ryan, chief technology officer joined.

ABS is a representative international shipping association that selects technological suitability and standards for ships and marine structures to help the stable development of the shipbuilding and marine industries.

Through this agreement, the two sides plan to prove the institutional automated system (HiCBM) and integrated safety control system (HiCAMS) for the first time in the world on actual ships by 2024.

The institutional automated system and the integrated safety control system are AI-based solutions that can diagnose the condition of mechanical equipment such as engines and generators on ships and automatically recognize and cope with unexpected situations such as fire.

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering already obtained basic certification(AIP) for the two systems from ABS in September last year. In June last year, its affiliate Avikus succeeded in crossing the ocean for the first time in the world by installing an autonomous operation system on a large merchant ship. With this agreement, if the demonstration of the two systems is successful, the world's first unmanned ship development in the large merchant sector, which can operate for a long time without the help of navigators, engineers and deck members, will become a reality.

Kim Sung-joon, director of Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, said, "We also plan to cooperate with ABS on the AI-based LNG Fuel Propulsion System (Hi-GAS+) demonstration project, which won the CES 2023 Innovation Award at the end of last year." He also said, "Cooperation with ABS will be of great help in HD Hyundai's leading in the technical development and commercialization of autonomous navigation.”

"We are happy to lead autonomous navigation and unmanned ship technology through cooperation with the world's No. 1 shipbuilding and offshore group," said Christopher J. Wiernicki, President and CEO of ABS. In addition, he said, "We expect it to be of great help in creating related advanced demonstration procedures for large ships."