There has been requested to automate the welding process in shipyard due to its dependence on skilled operators and the inferior working environments. According to these demands, multiple robot welding system for sub-assembly welding line has been developed, realized and installed at Keoje shipyard. In order to realize automatic welding system, robots have to be equipped with a sensing system to recognize the position of the welding panels. In this research, a camera vision system(CVS) is developed to detect the position of base panels for sub-assembly line in shipbuilding. Two camera vision systems are used in two different stages (fitting and welding) to automate the recognition and positioning of welding lines. For automatic recognition of panel position, various image processing algorithms are proposed in this paper.