The South Korean Navy has tested for the first time a humanoid robot that replaces a sailor at the ship’s wheel. Steering duties were taken over by a KAIST-made machine called PIBOT.
The Army is looking for ways to keep warships operating with fewer people. This trial is of great importance because the shrinking population and low birth rate in the country are depleting the pool of conscription-age recruits that the Navy depends on.
The humanoid robot responds to Changwon’s driving commands
The testing was conducted at the Naval Education and Training Command’s ship handling facility in Changwon. This is in South Gyeongsang Province, about 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.
The Navy announced the trial on Friday. “Five degrees to port, hold course 330,” shouted an officer aboard the simulated Aegis destroyer. PIBOT repeated the command, grabbed the handlebars and confirmed “Cycle 330 held.”
Pivotal It uses a large linguistic model to process verbal commands and repeats each command before executing it. It’s the reverse reading, how a human helmsman can confirm the matter and catch misunderstandings before they happen.
Leader. Kim Hyung-joon leads the Navy’s Force Analysis and Test Evaluation Group. He described the commissioning as “an initial step towards analyzing whether the robot can carry out the ship handling process…without any error.”
PIBOT navigated narrow channels, bad weather, and ran at night, where a piloting error was most costly. A research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed the robot. Development began in 2022 as part of a program managed by the Defense Development Agency.
South Korea’s arms purchasing agency spent about 5.7 billion won, or about $3.8 million to $4.1 million. “It is very useful to be able to test the feasibility of an AI-based physical robot that carries out actual helmsman duties on a naval vessel,” said Professor Shim Hyun-chul, principal researcher at KAIST.
The four-stage path leads towards active warships
Officials have drawn up a four-step roadmap for the programme. Ground simulators come first. The anchored ships are next in line. The plan ends with day and night sea trials on active warships. Sea GHOST is the Navy’s framework behind it all, the service’s blueprint for a hybrid fleet run by man and machine.
The Navy returns to the workload again and again as a target. Sailors can expect lighter loads as bridge work is routinely handed over to robotic crews. The number of recruits continues to decline, but readiness is stable.
Kim said the Navy intends to adapt to a defense environment reshaped by declining troop numbers and rapid technological change. The service intends to use the results of these experiments to determine which jobs on board ships will be assigned to robots next.
Cryptopolitan I mentioned Blackstone has agreed to invest in South Korean high-precision motor maker Phototronic, valuing the company at about $676 million. Actuators convert the control signal into movement. These same components allow the robotic hand to hold the ship’s wheel and turn it.
The Navy is asking early-stage technology to do that instead. Kyungmin Song, a director at Blackstone, said the convergence of artificial intelligence and the physical world is a “major investment theme” for the company’s private equity arm. “Humanoid robotics and broader automation are still in the early stages of exponential growth,” he said.
