Online prediction of ship maneuvering motions based on adaptive weighted ensemble learning under dynamic changes

Dynamic changes in ship maneuverability challenge the accuracy and effectiveness of ship maneuvering models. This paper proposes an online prediction method based on the adaptive weighted ensemble learning framework, which can adaptively update the model according to changes in maneuverability, especially for reoccurring changes. The method contains two main mechanisms: the change monitoring mechanism and the adaptive weighting mechanism. The former identifies the change in ship dynamics and decides when to incorporate a new base model; the latter adjusts the weights of the base models to align with current scenarios, thus ensuring the predictive accuracy. To assess the method's effectiveness under varying ship dynamics, the online prediction of ship maneuvering motions under speed-induced dynamic changes is investigated. Compared with the offline model, the result demonstrates the superiority of the adaptive weighted ensemble model. The proposed method can consistently provide accurate predictions in the scenarios with reoccurring changes, and can also enhance the model capability by adjusting weights to cope with some unencountered changes.