Physical artificial intelligence (AI) company NC AI is launching the development of a cutting-edge robot AI brain to address the shipbuilding industry's longstanding challenge of "welding automation and autonomy."
NC AI announced Tuesday that it has won Hanwha Ocean's (042660.KS) "Vision Recognition-Based Welding-Specific Model and Collaborative Robot-Based Autonomous Welding Model Development" project and has launched a full-scale collaboration system with Hanwha Ocean to execute the project.
The project aims to fuse advanced AI vision recognition and precision robot control technology with welding work, a core process in shipbuilding that has traditionally relied on the expertise of skilled workers. Moving beyond conventional automation methods that repeat predetermined trajectories, the two companies aim to implement an "autonomous welding physical AI solution" in which robots independently recognize and assess welding areas to perform optimal welding in real time.
NC AI is conducting field-focused research that incorporates real-time data from Hanwha Ocean's actual worksites and feedback from its engineers. The company plans to complete a "shipbuilding-specialized vision recognition technology" that precisely extracts geometric weld lines and detects welding defects in real time, even amid heavy noise and contamination.
The final autonomous welding model and robot system to be developed will be applied to next-generation commercial vessels that Hanwha Ocean will build, as well as to special-purpose vessel construction processes that require a high degree of precision and security.
NC AI has placed its advanced multimodal technology at the forefront as the core driver of this welding autonomy. In particular, the company plans to officially announce "Varco Vision," a next-generation industry-specialized VLM model that further upgrades the performance of "Varco Vision 2.0," a vision-language model that received high praise for its ultra-lightweight and high-performance capabilities upon its release last year, and apply it as the core engine for this Hanwha Ocean project.
"Varco Vision" is an industry-specialized vision-language model that perfectly integrates visual environmental information with text instructions. Based on this, NC AI plans to expand it into a "VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model" that simultaneously processes vision, language, and action to directly control the physical movements of robots.
Under this approach, when a worker issues instructions through speech or text without complex coding, the collaborative robot uses "Varco Vision" to visually analyze the shape of the welding target and the condition of the weld line in real time, and independently derives action control commands such as the appropriate torch angle and speed. Beyond simple hardware automation, this is expected to become a complete example of "physical AI autonomous welding" in which robots independently perceive their surroundings and respond flexibly.
In addition to this contract, NC AI has been generating a series of major achievements in the physical AI field, including a recent national defense AX project with Hyundai Rotem to control multi-type and multi-robot systems, as well as robot AI technology cooperation with POSCO DX.
"Cooperation with Hanwha Ocean, which leads Korea's shipbuilding industry, will be the best stage to demonstrate the scalability of 'Varco,' NC AI's sovereign industry-specialized AI foundation model," NC AI CEO Lee Yeon-soo said. "We will successfully develop robust vision recognition technology and autonomous control models that overcome on-site dust and contamination, creating a world-class physical AI model that can be deployed in actual shipbuilding processes."
