HD Hyundai To Develop Humanoid Welders For Shipyards Amid Skilled Labour Shortage

Hyundai signed an agreement with robotics company Persona AI, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, and HD Hyundai Robotics to jointly develop and mass-produce welding humanoid robots for shipyards.

HD KSOE will develop welding training systems; HD Hyundai Robotics will handle integration, field testing, and quality assurance; and Persona AI will design a bipedal humanoid platform.

The agreement comes after their 2025 partnership was forged, following positive prototype evaluations.

This development is much needed in the industrial sector and shipbuilding, given the high risks involved in tasks like welding and the increasing shortage of skilled workers.

Through this venture, the companies want to manufacture highly-efficient and skilled robots that can do the lion’s share of physical labour, especially welding at modern shipyards and speed up the production process.

The aim is to produce a prototype by the end of this year, after which it will undergo rigorous testing and will be deployed in commercial operations by 2027.

Persona AI says that shipyards are an ideal testing environment for deploying and testing durable robot systems.

The company is advocating for using humanoid robots as the best solution for labour shortages in almost all sectors. The robots, once built and trained, would prove to be much cheaper, and owners would not have to worry about training them separately for different tasks or them going on strike.

They would be designed to work in fast-paced environments to meet daily targets. They would do dangerous jobs which are common in shipyards, energy infrastructure, and construction sectors, reducing the risk to human workers.

Persona AI said that their technical foundation is based on NASA-developed robotics systems, which they combined with their humanoid platform equipped with a robotic hand which works precisely and swiftly.

It can change the “Personas”, allowing it to adapt across industries and tasks. In shipbuilding, the robots can work like welders, repair workers, or conduct inspections and maintenance, especially of confined or difficult-to-reach areas like hulls or ship tanks. In the energy sector, they can work as maintenance workers, pipe welders, etc.