Digital News

　　In 1405, Zheng He set sail on his voyages to the Western Oceans, cutting through the waves and etching the brilliance of Chinese civilization into the annals of maritime history. On June 6, 2023, China’s first domestically built large cruise ship, Adora Magic City, was launched in Shanghai. This marked China’s successful capture of the “Crown Jewel” of the global shipbuilding industry, continuing the new legend of the Eastern giant vessel with a majestic presence.

　　In 2024, China’s shipbuilding completion, new orders, and holding orders represented 55.7%, 74.1%, and 63.1% of the global total, respectively, maintaining the world’s top position for 15 consecutive years. This fully showcases the immense strength of Chinese manufacturing. With the successful application of 5G, AI, and LNG technologies in shipbuilding, China’s shipbuilding industry is advancing towards digitalization, intelligence, and green development, achieving a transition from “leading in scale” to “leading with intelligence,” injecting strong impetus into building a maritime power and promoting new industrialization. During a recent visit to Shanghai, the reporter experienced firsthand the dynamic impact of digital and intelligent technologies in driving the high-quality development of China’s shipbuilding industry.

　　AI Empowers Ship Design with Intelligence

　　Shipbuilding industrial design is a critical stage prior to manufacturing. However, it comes with challenges such as extensive data consultation and multiple collaboration processes, making it difficult to improve efficiency. The reporter found that the global shipbuilding industry faces several challenges in the design phase, including inefficient knowledge acquisition, long modeling cycles, and delayed software adaptation. Specifically, the shipbuilding regulations are complex, with some documents spanning thousands of pages. Manual searches often yield an accuracy rate of less than 40%. Converting 2D drawings into 3D models typically requires a team of 10 to 15 people and takes 3 to 5 months. Additionally, multi-system development and cross-departmental collaboration are challenging, and customized development of industrial software for new ship orders takes 1 to 2 months.

　　To tackle industry challenges, China Unicom Data Intelligence Co., Ltd., China Unicom Shanghai Branch, and industrial software development organizations launched an AI Innovation Lab in 2024. With AI fully integrated into the ship design process, designers’ work efficiency and model redesign efficiency have increased by 50%, and the software customization cycle has been shortened from 1–2 months to 1–2 days. “AI may not solve all problems, but it’s becoming an invaluable tool for designers and a key driver of cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the shipbuilding industry,” a technician from China Unicom told the reporter.

　　AI is driving significant improvements in quality and efficiency within the shipbuilding industry. Focusing on critical and challenging scenarios in three key areas of ship design—shipbuilding standard Q&A, model redesign, and system design—the technical team has developed an industry-level solution through six months of collaborative research. China Unicom leverages its technological and algorithmic strengths, integrating them with customers’ ship scenarios and data, to deliver rapid and effective AI solutions addressing pain points in the shipbuilding industry, such as complex regulatory requirements and lengthy modeling and design cycles. This better serves the industry’s localization and digital transformation.

　　Each ship has its unique design requirements, demanding customized analysis and manufacturing. Designers must consult tens of thousands of pages of specifications to verify parameters and perform calculations. By leveraging the Yuanjing MaaS platform’s RAG technology and the domestically developed DeepSeek model, along with algorithms such as cascade segmentation and multi-route retrieval, China Unicom has tackled the challenges of unstructured text parsing. This enables cross-modal retrieval of charts and formulas, facilitating the analysis and answering of ship design specifications. The platform supports rich-text Q&A capabilities, ensuring precise sourcing of answers and allowing ship designers to achieve a tenfold increase in query efficiency and a 50% boost in overall work efficiency. As an industry first, this product has been integrated into domestically developed design software and is being adapted and promoted for use with domestic computing power.

　　Model redesign is a key step in ship design, where existing 2D design drawings are used to create an accurate 3D digital model of the entire ship through specialized shipbuilding software. This process precisely replicates the spatial positions and geometric relationships of all elements, such as the hull structure. China Unicom has pioneered the use of Yuanjing’s multimodal and visual large models to identify parameters and design elements from 2D drawings. This approach generates the data needed for 3D modeling, and by integrating DSL modeling languages, it reduces design labor by 40% and boosts efficiency by 50%, driving full-process digitalization while cutting costs and improving efficiency.

　　Shipbuilding requires system software that manages the entire lifecycle, involving a wide array of requirements, high development complexity, and long design cycles. Through in-depth research, China Unicom has introduced an intelligent industrial software design agent with features such as overall planning, recommendations, decision-making, and execution. By integrating business knowledge with orchestration technology and enabling multi-scenario collaboration through diagrams and documents, the speed of requirements analysis has been significantly improved, making it ideal for sophisticated applications like industrial manufacturing. With this intelligent agent, customers have reduced the time needed to generate shipbuilding management system design specifications from 3 hours to just 15 minutes, resulting in a 50% boost in overall process efficiency.

　　5G + AR: Ensuring Shipbuilding Quality

　　Shipbuilding, characterized by its highly complex product structures, large product dimensions, stringent technical requirements, rigorous production safety standards, substantial capital investment, and labor-intensive processes, necessitates the collaborative design of millions of production resources, including finished parts, structural components, chemical materials, process auxiliaries, and standard parts. On the southern bank of the south channel of the Yangtze River estuary, in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, the reporter discovered that the second domestically built large cruise ship, Adora Flora City, is a “giant system” project. With over 10 million parts and a large workforce, the project involves complex system interfaces and requires substantial collaborative effort.

　　To enhance shipbuilding efficiency, engineers have implemented digital collaborative design technology, creating a global network that enables suppliers from around the world to contribute to the design process. Additionally, 3D digital technology is used to simulate the construction process, minimizing the need for “on-site adjustments” as much as possible.

　　In the shipbuilding plant’s smart thin sheet production workshop, a technical expert from China Unicom explained that the thickness and flatness of steel sheets are critical to the structural quality of the ship. To ensure the production of high-quality vessels, China Unicom deployed a 5G-based system at the factory in 2021 to inspect the assembly accuracy of large-scale steel structures. This system enables real-time monitoring and precision control throughout the assembly process via the 5G network. By integrating automated detection and analysis technologies, the system significantly enhances efficiency compared to traditional methods. It also features an instant feedback mechanism for real-time adjustments during assembly. With the application of 5G-powered machine vision in the detection process, measurement time has been reduced from 3–4 hours to under 30 minutes, increasing measurement efficiency by 400%. This benchmark application in equipment manufacturing has been recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as a key industry practice.

　　In 2023, China Unicom, in collaboration with industry partners, established an AR Remote Inspection Studio, using innovative AR+5G technology to improve production, construction, and quality control efficiency. Additionally, the 5G+AR remote inspection technology allows shipowners and surveyors to conduct project acceptance remotely, using 5G networks and AR glasses to view the project from a “first-person perspective” without having to be on-site. According to reports, China Unicom engineers have also integrated 5G technology into the ship’s overall operations. By using multi-network fusion isolation control, they offer a “private network” experience for different roles, boosting operational efficiency and enhancing the passenger experience.

　　At the Yangtze River estuary in Pudong New Area, the reporter noted that, with the support of China Unicom’s 5G private network and technologies such as big data and digital twins, a 6,000-square-meter intelligent three-dimensional warehouse for heavy load stackers has enabled smart, 3D management of heavy materials for giant system projects like cruise ships. The system automates processes such as matching storage locations, monitoring storage conditions, and sending business alerts. It also features high-precision positioning and control, ensuring fast and secure material handling. According to China Unicom’s technical experts, compared to traditional storage models, this intelligent warehouse has boosted storage and logistics efficiency, as well as space utilization, by over 200%. Additionally, labor costs and operational risks have been significantly reduced.

　　The reporter learned that with the adoption of digital and intelligent technologies, shipbuilding efficiency has seen a significant boost. For example, the construction cycle for a 60,000-ton bulk carrier has been shortened from 4 years to just 8 months. According to technical experts from China Unicom, it’s not just the shipbuilding industry—“data + intelligence” will continue to empower manufacturing and various other industries, injecting technological strength into the development and expansion of new quality productive forces.

　　Toward the ocean, we ride the waves and set sail on a new journey. Thanks to the strong collaboration between the national teams in information and communication technology and shipbuilding, technologies such as 5G and AI will be more widely and deeply integrated into the shipbuilding industry. This will empower China’s shipbuilding industry with cutting-edge intelligence, propelling intelligent manufacturing in China toward a steady and prosperous future.