With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, large models have become a crucial engine driving the intelligent transformation of various industries. In 2025, large model technology has not only achieved breakthroughs at the technical level but also demonstrated enormous potential and value in practical applications. As a key application area for large models, autonomous ship navigation can fully leverage their capabilities in multimodal interaction and complex reasoning—simulating the decision-making of experienced captains to ultimately achieve end-to-end unmanned ship operation.

Recently, Dalian Maritime University, in collaboration with Zhilong (Dalian) Marine Technology Co., Ltd. and Zhilun (Dalian) Technology Co., Ltd., jointly developed China's first large model for autonomous ship navigation—the “Navigator”—pioneering the application of large models in this cutting-edge field.

The “Navigator” large model is built upon the DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence algorithm. It is capable of recognizing environmental conditions, navigational channels, and the status of nearby vessels to make real-time decisions that ensure safe and efficient navigation. This enables stable vessel operation even under complex and challenging maritime conditions. At present, the “Navigator” model has undergone online testing across various port-to-port scenarios. The “Navigator” large model is China’s first AI system capable of machine-to-machine dialogue and the first domestic application of a large model that autonomously achieves port-to-port route planning. By overcoming critical technological challenges in navigation situational awareness representation, embedding of marine environment and navigational rules, multimodal voyage data fusion, and standardized output of intelligent ship control commands, it has realized online port-to-port route planning and filed six invention patents in related technical domains.

The initial research and development team for the "Navigator" large model consists of Professor Zheng Kai from College of Marine Electrical Engineering, Associate Professor Shen Helong from Navigation College and Associate Professor Wang Huibing from Information Science and Technology College of Dalian Maritime University, collaborating with postgraduate students and R&D engineers specializing in relevant fields. This research team has long followed engineering applications of cutting-edge AI technologies, particularly large models, in maritime navigation domains. The team will maintain close alignment with the latest advancements in AI large model algorithms while actively promoting practical shipboard implementation of the "Navigator”.