In the future, maritime autonomous surface ship(MASS)will be extensively used in maritime cargo transportation. In the process of MASS development, a gradual process of “constrained autonomy to full autonomy” is necessary, so the control system of "man-machine co-driving" is a stage that the MASS must go through. The switching of control rights among autonomous system, shore-based operator and crew on board has also become necessary. At present, there are no standards for the switching mechanism of MASS control right. In order to establish a preliminary MASS control switching mechanism and provide reference for the safety of "man-machine co-driving", this paper makes an analysis and research on the autonomous ship guidelines. The study found that on the basis of the existing autonomous ship specifications, the autonomous ship control switching mechanism can be obtained from the four dimensions of scenario, agent, priority and process. The research results are meaningful to provide reference for the establishment of autonomous ship control switching mechanism and subsequent research.