ABSTRACTDue to demographical factors, there will be a 25% decline in the national labor pool of eligible 17 to 21 year old men by 1992. As the Navy faces fierce competition with other services and private industry for the dwindling personnel resources of the nation, efforts must be made to consider automating certain tasks, especially those that are hazardous, boring, and labor intensive onboard ships at sea.The Surface Ship Continuing Concept Formulation (CONFORM) Program (SEA‐5014) sponsored the Naval Surface Weapons Center's Robotics Laboratory to identify potential applications of robotic and artificial intelligence systems to operation and mission activities for shipboard use. The results of the investigation concerning applications of robotics to automate the aforementioned tasks are presented. Changes in current manning levels for selected tasks and ship classes, i.e., CVs, CVNs, LPDs, LPNs, and auxiliaries are examined. Future ship designs incorporating robotics, such as the advance based repair (ABR) ship are discussed. Twenty‐four applications were cited in the study which include a remote controlled vehicle for flight deck operations, limited tasks in biological, chemical, and radiation environments, computer aided command decision aids, ordnance handling, undersea search, recovery, and salvage, and ventilation duct cleaning. Four of the applications and their subsequent hardware fruition will be discussed.