Ship Maneuvering Prediction Using Grey Box Framework via Adaptive RM-SVM with Minor Rudder

A grey box framework is applied to model ship maneuvering by using a reference model (RM) and a support vector machine (SVM) (RM-SVM). First, the nonlinear characteristics of the target ship are determined using the RM and the similarity rule. Then, the linear SVM adaptively fits the errors between acceleration variables of RM and target ship. Finally, the accelerations of the target ship are predicted using RM and linear SVM. The parameters of the RM are known and conveniently acquired, thus avoiding the modeling process. The SVM has the advantages of fast training, quick simulation, and no overfitting. Testing and validation are conducted using the ship model test data. The test case reveals the practicability of the RF-SVM based modeling method, while the validation cases confirm the generalization ability of the grey box framework.