South Korea’s Navy puts a humanoid robot at the helm for the first time

South Korea’s Navy tested for the first time a humanoid robot that is replacing a sailor at a ship’s wheel. Steering duties were taken over by a KAIST-built machine called PIBOT.

The military is looking for ways to keep warships running with fewer people. The trial is significant because the country’s shrinking population and declining birth rate are draining the pool of draft-age recruits on which the Navy depends.

A humanoid robot answers helm orders in Changwon

The test was conducted at the Naval Education and Training Command’s ship handling facility in Changwon. That’s in South Gyeongsang Province, about 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The Navy announced the trial Friday. “Port five degrees, hold course 330,” an officer aboard a simulated Aegis destroyer called out. PIBOT repeated the order, grabbed the wheel and confirmed, “Holding course 330.”

PIBOT uses a large language model to process verbal commands and repeats each command before executing it. It’s the readback, how a human helmsman would confirm an order, and catch miscommunication before it happens.

Cmdr. Kim Hyeong-jun leads the Navy’s Force Analysis and Test Evaluation Group. He described the run as “an initial step toward analyzing whether a robot can execute ship handling … without any error.”

PIBOT navigated narrow channels, bad weather, and nighttime runs, where a mistake at the helm cost the most. A research team at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed the robot. Development began in 2022 as part of a program run by the Agency for Defense Development.

South Korea’s arms procurement agency has spent about 5.7 billion won, or about $3.8 million to $4.1 million. Professor Shim Hyun-chul, the KAIST lead researcher, called it “deeply meaningful to be able to test the feasibility of a physical AI-based humanoid robot executing actual helmsman duties aboard a naval vessel.”

A four-stage path leads toward active warships

Officials laid out a four-step roadmap for the program. Land-based simulators come first. Moored ships are next in line. The plan ends with day and night sea trials on active warships. Sea GHOST is the Navy’s framework behind all this, the service’s blueprint for a hybrid fleet manned by man and machine.

The Navy circles back to workload again and again as a goal. Sailors can expect lighter loads as bridge work is routinely handed to robotic crew. The number of conscripts continues to fall, but readiness is stable.

Kim stated that the Navy intends to adapt to a defense environment reshaped by declining troop numbers and rapid technological change. The service intends to use the results of these trials to determine which shipboard jobs will be assigned to robots next.

Cryptopolitan reported that Blackstone has agreed to invest in South Korean high precision actuator maker Futronic, valuing the company at about $676 million. Actuators convert a control signal into motion. Those same components allow a robotic hand to grab and spin a ship’s wheel.

The Navy is asking early-stage technology to do it instead. Blackstone principal Kyungmin Song said the convergence of AI and the physical world is a “key investment theme” for the firm’s private equity arm. “Humanoids and broader automation are still in the early innings of exponential growth,” he said.