Abstract: To address the limitation of manually selecting aids to navigation in chart generation of which the efficiency is low and the results are constrained by the operator's ability and experience, a method for automatically selecting aids to navigation based on the maximal covering of spatial influence domain is proposed. Firstly, the spatial influence domains are defined, and the spatial influence domain model is constructed. Secondly, the importance of the location of the aid to navigation is weighted evaluated. Thirdly, the algorithm of automatic selection is designed, namely "rounds algorithm". Finally, the optimal aids to navigation are selected automatically. The experimental results demonstrate that:the proposed method can select aids to navigation automatically, and the results can accord with the requirements of "Specification for Chinese nautical charts"; the man-made mistake and the differences on a same selection because of different operators can be avoided; the efficiency of automatic selection is obviously higher than that of current manual selection.