U.S Navy Begins Construction Of Automated Factories With Robot Workers & Human Supervisors

The U.S Navy plans to invest $900 million to speed up submarine production by building automated factories run by robots and supervised by humans.

Navy Secretary John Phelan inaugurated Hadrian’s Factory 4 in Alabama and addressed the media by saying that it will not be an ordinary factory but a complete ecosystem.

It will handle everything from raw material processing to testing the finished product, thus doing the work of several suppliers and contractors.

The Navy said that the need for such a production centre arose due to a lack of skilled labour, especially welders, machine workers and specialist engineers.

Hence, the Navy decided to automate these processes as this would be precise, quick and prevent delays.

Submarines such as the Virginia or Columbia-class take anywhere from 18 to 34 million man-hours to assemble.

On the contrary, with facilities run by AI and robotics, this time can be reduced significantly, so the navy can manufacture two attack and one nuclear submarine annually.

Per reports, the new facilities will automate 80% of the work, with robots doing the physical labour while human beings will work as supervisors of the automated systems.

The AI operating system called Opus will allow this factory to become a reality soon, and this is where the real magic will happen, almost stepping into a Sci-fi, the Navy explained.

Opus will enable the Navy to have the capital equipment and robotics running under the command of the human supervisors.