CoMPass: A Roadmap to Collaborative Perception and Autonomy in Maritime Systems

Maritime shipping is a cornerstone of global trade; however, it is vulnerable to operational failures, primarily due to limited situational awareness. While Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships offer potential solutions, the transition to fully autonomous fleets encounters significant cost and infrastructure challenges. Current research focuses on individual vessel perception, facing fundamental limitations such as sensor constraints, communication bottlenecks, and spatial coverage gaps that cannot be resolved through local integration. This paper introduces CoMPass, a research framework for Collaborative Perception in Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships, which leverages adaptive communication networks to address these challenges in autonomous maritime operations. We derive challenges from the state-of-the-art and propose a research agenda that progressively enhances maritime autonomous capabilities beyond isolated autonomous manoeuvrability. The agenda comprises four key pillars: self-adaptive multi-relay communication networks, navigation-aware network reconfiguration, perceptioncentric network optimisation, and autonomous decision-making through distributed collaboration based on agent-based and learning techniques. This research framework provides a systematic pathway to scalable, safety-critical maritime autonomy that bridges legacy vessel competencies with future autonomous operations, while addressing the unique challenges of the maritime domain.