Samsung Heavy Industries has announced the signing of an ‘Extended Reality (XR) Technology Development Cooperation MOU’ with Samsung Electronics. At the ‘Galaxy XR’ showcase event, they unveiled the use of XR technology in ship inspections for the first time. In a demonstration, workers equipped with ‘Galaxy XR’ used passthrough and hand-tracking technologies to inspect the 3D-modeled engine of an LNG carrier in a virtual space.
The MOU between the two companies was catalyzed by Samsung Heavy Industries’ in-house development of VR solutions which they integrated into ‘Galaxy XR,’ successfully testing technologies like hand tracking. Since 2018, Samsung Heavy Industries has been using VR solutions for job and safety training as well as blueprint reviews to help workers adapt to shipyard environments and improve skills. In July, they also installed a VR solution for educating crew members on eco-friendly ships at ‘Evergreen,’ a global shipping company in Taiwan.
Through their XR business collaboration, Samsung Heavy Industries and Samsung Electronics plan to carry out the design and development of new products, joint branding for promotion, and exploration of next-generation business areas. Further, Samsung Heavy Industries intends to upgrade their XR solutions by integrating multi-modal AI, high-performance video see-through (VST), and sophisticated rendering technologies.
Dong-yeon Lee, Vice President and Director of the Shipbuilding and Marine Research Institute at Samsung Heavy Industries, stated that this collaboration would accelerate the implementation of smart shipyards by combining Samsung Electronics’ XR technology with Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipbuilding solutions and content development expertise, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of ship manufacturing.