A Cross-Domain Scientometric Analysis of Situational Awareness of Autonomous Vehicles With Focus on the Maritime Domain

Highly automated vehicles are making their way towards implementation in many modes of transportation, including shipping. From the safety perspective, it is critically important that such vehicles or the operators overseeing them maintain their sense of the environment, also referred to as situational awareness. The present study investigates the worldwide research effort focusing on situational awareness for autonomous transport and explores how the maritime domain could benefit from it. The results indicate that most of the research originates from the automotive sector, but the topic is developing fast in other transportation modes too. Some findings have been shared across the modes of transportation, but only to a limited extent. Although technology development is performed based on the achievements within basic research domains, there has been little feedback from applied sciences. Similarly, collaborative research is not strongly developed.