Page 61: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2026)

ROBOTIC WELDING the American Welding Society projects demand for more than 320,000 new welding professionals by 2030.

Shipbuilders are also competing for talent with defense man- ufacturers, energy infrastructure projects, data center construc- tion, mining equipment manufacturers and heavy industry.

Every one of those sectors depends on the same skilled trades.

Experienced welders continue to retire faster than new workers enter the profession, tightening an already strained labor market.

The industry's challenges are becoming increasingly visi- ble. Programs like the Navy's Constellation-class frigate have experienced signi? cant schedule delays and cost growth de- spite substantial investment, underscoring just how di? cult it has become to translate demand into production.

Growing the workforce remains essential, yet even the most successful recruiting and training e? orts will take years to meaningfully increase output. Adding workers alone won’t close that gap fast enough; the industry needs to rethink how the work itself gets done. That makes improving productivity just as important as adding people.

Why Shipbuilding Is Dif? cult to Automate

Shipbuilding has never resembled a traditional assembly line. Steel shifts during fabrication. Heat from welding chang- es geometry. Components rarely arrive perfectly aligned. Con- through variation rather than simply execute a ? xed program. ditions on the shop ? oor evolve throughout production. Expe- Combined with computer vision, planning and motion control, rienced welders make countless small adjustments based on it can identify weld joints, compensate for variation, adapt to what they see in front of them. You have one shot to get it right heat distortion and modify weld paths as production evolves.

and risk thousands in material costs and rework if you don’t For shipbuilding, that adaptability changes the equation.

Traditional industrial robots were never designed for this Tasks that were previously considered too variable for auto- kind of work. They perform exceptionally well when every mation become practical. More weld hours become address- part is identical and every movement can be programmed able. More production can move forward without waiting for in advance – producing one part exactly the same 10,000 scarce skilled labor.

times. When variation enters the equation, their e? ective- These capabilities are also becoming increasingly mobile. ness drops quickly. Intelligent systems are no longer con? ned to ? xed robotic

The next generation of automation has to do much more cells. They can move throughout shipyards, fabrication facili- than repeat programmed motions. It needs to perceive chang- ties and other dynamic work environments, bringing advanced ing conditions, understand what is happening, and adjust manufacturing closer to where the work is actually happening.

while work is underway rather than simply repeating a ? xed motion. Those capabilities have been missing for years. Expanding Capacity Alongside Skilled Labor

This shift is already gaining momentum across the mari-

Physical AI Expands What Can Be Automated time industry. Recent collaborations between shipbuilders and

Physical AI changes that. Traditional automation follows AI technology developers, including Huntington Ingalls In- pre-programmed instructions. Physical AI continuously ob- dustries’ High-Yield Production Robotics (HYPR) initiative, serves its surroundings, interprets what’s actually in front of re? ect a growing recognition that meeting future production it and decides in real time what it needs to do to achieve the goals will require new manufacturing approaches alongside desired outcome. continued investment in people.

The key di? erence is the model behind it. Machine learn- Physical AI extends what experienced welders can accom- ing is only as good as the data it's trained on, and physical AI plish by taking on increased welding operations while keeping is built on a massive multimodal dataset of real-world weld- human expertise at the center of production. Skilled trades- ing data that teaches the system what good welding looks like people remain responsible for the most complex fabrication, across countless scenarios. That trained model becomes the quality oversight and judgment-intensive work, while AI- foundation for decision-making, allowing the robot to reason powered systems increase the amount of productive work the www.marinelink.com 61

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