ShipWeld: Explainable AI in Robotics for Shipbuilding

Together with our consortium partners IKnowHow SA (IKH) and Carrell SA, UMNAI announces the commencement of the EU funded project ShipWeld.

ShipWeld is an innovative, self-navigating robotic welding solution that will revolutionize the shipbuilding and repair industry. The vision is to reduce manufacturing costs for shipbuilders while improving welding quality, and to increase worker safety by preventing their exposure to harmful welding radiation and toxic fumes.

UMNAI’s Neuro-Symbolic AI is applied to the automation of welding in shipbuilding and repairs where scale and lack of uniformity make welding automation difficult to implement. UMNAI’s technology is used to accurately detect metal plates and welding seams to program the robot arm welding trajectories. Explainability enables efficient human-in-the-loop automation and auditable quality control logs in this safety critical application.

UMNAI products applied to this use case are also applicable to any robotics and visual detection use case, including but not limited to Industry 4.0, robotics, remote medical diagnostics and intervention, and autonomous vehicles.

ShipWeld is part of a sub-project that has indirectly received funding from the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme via an Open Call issued and executed under project TRINITY (grant agreement No 825196).

IKnowHow SA was founded in 2004 and in 2016 merged with Innora, an award-winning robotics firm, to form IKH Innovation. They create value by tackling large-scale projects and by taking a citizen-centric approach to helping public and private organizations innovate, grow, and streamline existing processes. IKH is a regional leader in executing large-scale ICT solutions for government and industry alike. IKH Innovation, our robotics arm, is a world-class team of robotics and software engineers with expertise in mechanical design, embedded control, data-driven intelligence and mobile robots. IKH Innovation designs and builds tailor-made robotic solutions capable of performing in demanding environments.

Carrell SA is a private company, run by the Carellis family for more than 60 years, since its very inception in Alexandria, Egypt in 1955. Having had an international outlook since the very beginning, the company emigrated to Piraeus, Greece where it has been running for the majority of its lifetime. Being one of the oldest companies in the ship repair sector in Greece, through constant effort, we have managed to offer high end quality services with direct communication to their management team due to our flat corporate structure and low prices benefiting from the current Greek economic conditions. Their qualified and highly skilled human capital is capable to find efficient solutions for their clients. CARELL is following with great care the macroeconomic factors of the industry and offer tailor made solutions.