Predicting heave and surge motions of a semi-submersible with neural networks
This addresses motion prediction for offshore operations to improve compensation systems and early warnings, but it is incremental as it applies an existing LSTM method to a specific domain.
The study tackled real-time motion prediction for a semi-submersible by developing an LSTM-based model, achieving predictions up to 46.5 seconds into the future with close to 90% average accuracy and robustness to noise levels up to 0.8.
Real-time motion prediction of a vessel or a floating platform can help to improve the performance of motion compensation systems. It can also provide useful early-warning information for offshore operations that are critical with regard to motion. In this study, a long short-term memory (LSTM) -based machine learning model was developed to predict heave and surge motions of a semi-submersible. The training and test data came from a model test carried out in the deep-water ocean basin, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. The motion and measured waves were fed into LSTM cells and then went through serval fully connected (FC) layers to obtain the prediction. With the help of measured waves, the prediction extended 46.5 s into future with an average accuracy close to 90%. Using a noise-extended dataset, the trained model effectively worked with a noise level up to 0.8. As a further step, the model could predict motions only based on the motion itself. Based on sensitive studies on the architectures of the model, guidelines for the construction of the machine learning model are proposed. The proposed LSTM model shows a strong ability to predict vessel wave-excited motions.