China State Shipbuilding Corp, the world's largest shipbuilder, has begun exploring artificial intelligence to automate and optimize ship design, according to a senior technologist.
Speaking exclusively to China Daily at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Saturday, Gu Yiqing, deputy chief engineer of CSSC's Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute, revealed that China's massive shipbuilding footprint gives it an unmatched data advantage for AI training.
"The core challenge we are dealing with lies in consolidating these data resources, preparing them for AI, and training AI systems on them," Gu said, adding that the process is "fraught with difficulties".
"Once breakthroughs are achieved in this process, the adoption of AI-assisted ship design will become a popular trend in this industry. Looking ahead, AI can help organize design drawings and documentation, construct semantic corpora for ship design, improve design efficiency and optimize design outcomes," she said.
Engineers from the Shanghai institute, a CSSC subsidiary, have already launched preliminary explorations in this field, Gu added.
