Blind Estimation of a Ship’s Relative Wave Heading

This article proposes a method to estimate a ship’s relative heading against the waves. The procedure relies purely on ship-board measurements of global responses such as motion components, accelerations and the bending moment amidships. There is no particular (mathematical) model connected to the estimate, and therefore it is called a ‘blind estimate’. The approach is in this introductory study tested by analysing simulated data. The analysis reveals that it is possible to estimate a ship’s relative-heading on the basis of shipboard measurements only.