Faced with shrinking population, Korea's Navy tests humanoid helmsman

Humanoid robot "PIBOT" performs helmsman duties under the direction of an officer of an Aegis destroyer during the Navy’s first-ever robotic crew combat experiment at the Naval Education and Training Command’s ship handling facility in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, July 23. Courtesy of Republic of Korea Navy

By Lee Kyung-min

• Published Jul 24, 2026 12:00 PM KST

Inside a naval bridge simulator in the southern coastal city of Changwon, an officer issued a sharp navigational command: "Port five degrees, hold course 330!"

The voice that echoed back was not that of a young sailor, but the metallic confirmation of a humanoid robot.

"Port five degrees, hold course 330," the machine repeated, its mechanical hands gripping the wheel to adjust the ship's heading before reporting completion: "Holding course 330."

The Korean Navy conducted Thursday its first-ever combat experiment utilizing PIBOT, a physical artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid robot designed to replace human sailors at the helm. Developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) with 5.7 billion won ($4.1 million) in defense funding, the initiative represents a high-tech gamble to solve a looming national existential crisis: a demographic cliff that is rapidly draining the country's military recruitment pool.

The simulation tested PIBOT’s ability to process verbal orders via a large language model, repeat commands to avoid miscommunication and physically manipulate ship controls under demanding scenarios, including narrow waterways, rough night seas and severe weather.

According to military officials, the trial is the first phase of a four-stage rollout that will eventually move PIBOT from land-based simulators to moored vessels, and ultimately to daytime and nighttime sea trials on active warships.

The initiative falls under Navy Sea GHOST, the nation's strategic framework to build a hybrid manned-unmanned fleet. By handing routine operational duties over to robotic crew members, military leaders hope to ease the burden on human personnel while maintaining operational readiness despite a shrinking draft-age population.

"This combat experiment is an initial step toward analyzing whether a robot can execute ship handling — a task that was once the exclusive domain of human crew members — without any error," said Cmdr. Kim Hyeong-jun, head of the Navy’s Force Analysis and Test Evaluation Group. He added that the Navy plans to actively adapt to the changing defense landscape driven by plummeting troop numbers and rapid technological shifts.

Professor Shim Hyun-chul, the lead researcher at KAIST, noted the milestone of testing a physical AI-driven humanoid in a specialized military setting.

"It is deeply meaningful to be able to test the feasibility of a physical AI-based humanoid robot executing actual helmsman duties aboard a naval vessel," Shim said.

As Korea grapples with one of the world's lowest fertility rate, its armed forces are increasingly looking to AI and robotics not just as technological upgrades, but as essential surrogates for soldiers.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.