Core Technology Topic Identification and Evolution Analysis Based on Patent Text Mining—A Case Study of Unmanned Ship

Accurate identification and evolutionary analysis of core technology topics within patent texts play a crucial role in enabling enterprises to discern the development trajectory of core technologies, optimize research and development (R&D) strategies, and foster technological innovation. Based on the perspective of time series dynamic analysis, this study uses the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and TF-IDF text vectorization methods to comprehensively mine and identify patent technology topics in the field of unmanned ships. This study deeply analyzes the dynamic evolution of unmanned ship technology topics from two aspects: the evolution of technology theme intensity and the evolution of technology theme content. We refine the development characteristics and future development directions of unmanned ship technology. The findings reveal two hot technologies, six growth technologies, and six declining technologies in unmanned ship technology. Furthermore, the analysis of technical topic evolution illustrates a pattern of fragmentation, inheritance, and integration. This study advances the methodologies used for identifying and analyzing patent technology topics and helps to grasp the development rules and evolutionary trends of core technologies. In addition, this paper has reference value for the research and practice of core technology topic identification and evolution analysis methods based on patent text mining.