Probabilistic prediction of the heave motions of a semi-submersible by a deep learning problem model
This work addresses real-time motion prediction for offshore platforms to enhance motion compensation systems and provide early warnings, representing an incremental improvement in domain-specific applications.
The study tackled the problem of predicting the heave motions of a semi-submersible offshore platform by extending a deep learning model to quantify uncertainty using dropout, finding that the predictions form a Gaussian process and that adding noise improves robustness across test data.
The real-time motion prediction of a floating offshore platform refers to forecasting its motions in the following one- or two-wave cycles, which helps improve the performance of a motion compensation system and provides useful early warning information. In this study, we extend a deep learning (DL) model, which could predict the heave and surge motions of a floating semi-submersible 20 to 50 seconds ahead with good accuracy, to quantify its uncertainty of the predictive time series with the help of the dropout technique. By repeating the inference several times, it is found that the collection of the predictive time series is a Gaussian process (GP). The DL model with dropout learned a kernel inside, and the learning procedure was similar to GP regression. Adding noise into training data could help the model to learn more robust features from the training data, thereby leading to a better performance on test data with a wide noise level range. This study extends the understanding of the DL model to predict the wave excited motions of an offshore platform.