For the past decade the study of the ship domain theory has made great progress and been widely used in the research of ship collision avoidance, navigation decision-making and marine traffic engineering. With the rising of the concept of MASS (maritime autonomous surface ship) and relevant laws/regulations, the process of ship intelligence and autonomy will be accelerated, and the ship domain theory will develop in a new direction under this trend. The main motivation of this paper is to explore the role of ship domain in the development of autonomous vessels. Firstly, the development status of the ship domain is summarized including existing definitions and modeling methods, and the practical application scenarios of the ship domain models are discussed. Subsequently, the development of MASS and the challenges it may face in the future innovation process are discussed. Finally, according to the needs of the MASS era, the future development direction and application of the ship domain theory are put forward.

ship domain  /  MASS  /  collision avoidance  /  navigation decision-making  /  autonomous