Industry-specialized artificial intelligence (AI) corporations MakinaRocks said on the 22nd it will begin developing an "AI equipment operations aide" to support the operation and management of equipment aboard ships with the Navy's 1st Fleet Command. The project is based on the "defense integrated AI platform," a technology selected for the Defense Innovation Companies 100 program. The development period is one year in total, from this month through Oct. next year.
The goal of this project is for AI to learn a vast body of materials such as equipment operating manuals and maintenance guidelines, reflect daily accumulated operation and maintenance results in real time, and help crew members operate and manage equipment with ease. Navy vessels are environments with limited network and graphics processing unit (GPU) resources, which constrains the application of conventional cloud-based AI systems. MakinaRocks plans to build a lightweight LLMOps (large language model operations) environment based on k3s using its in-house AI platform, Runway, and to overcome the constraints of specialized military environments by applying onboard data preprocessing technology.
In particular, the goal is to support the operation of key weapon systems such as the Mk. 45 5-inch naval gun, laying the groundwork for lower-skilled personnel to handle weapons efficiently.
MakinaRocks CEO Yun Seong-ho said, "This project is significant in that it verifies the feasibility of operating AI in real ship environments with limited networks and resources," and added, "By having AI learn and provide complex operating manuals and maintenance guidelines in real time, we will create a practical case that improves on-site equipment operation and management capabilities so that the utility of AI can be felt directly."