In shipyard, plate forming is widely used to form the ship hull plate in various shapes. Line heating
method by using a flame torch is one of the major shipbuilding processes carried out by skilled workers.
Since the forming characteristics depend upon their experiences in manual forming, there are much
variations between products and difficulties in communication between engineers and workers. Hence, it
needs to develop an automatic forming system which can not only reduce the working time and rework
costs but also improve the working environment and hull forming productivity. One of the final goals of
plate forming automation is to form a target shape from the initial plate automatically. For automated plate
forming, it is required to determine where and how to heat on the plate. To realize this procedure, the
inverse problem should be first solved and the effect of curvature shape formed at the heating path should
be investigated. In this study, the inverse problem was solved by geometrical approach using the
relationship between bending angle and radius of curvature of the curved shape. In addition, experiments of
two-dimensional plate forming were performed with the distance-based method considering the curved
bending with curvature. The result of the formed shape agreed considerably well with the target shape.