Abstract: The Xuelong research vessel is an important tool in the development of China's polar scientific research. A large quantity of ship track data has accumulated over dozens of voyages; they contain valuable information that needs to be mined. Track segmentation categorizes ship tracks according to the state of the ship’s propulsion system: at rest or engaged. Efficient segmentation algorithms can extract the segments containing large amounts of information. However, because of uneven distribution of track information, algorithms often cause problems such as excessive segmentation, and segmentation results are less than ideal. This paper proposes a segmentation method based on time-domain difference for the entire track. The method performs differential processing on speed in the time domain; because of frequent fluctuations in speed, influence of the segmentation result is effectively reduced. It normalizes path loss and speed fluctuation of the differential track, time step of track difference is determined dynamically, and finally, the track is divided by the rate threshold. Track of the 29th Antarctic expedition was segmented using the time-domain difference method and the classic Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm. Results from the time-domain difference method can effectively reduce excessive track segmentation, and are better than those obtained from DBSCAN in accuracy and time efficiency of track segmentation.

Key words: research vessel track, time-domain difference, stay point, step size, DBSCAN