The goal of SeaSense is to increase the operational safety at sea by developing a system which constantly monitors the wave condition, the structural loading and seakeeping performance of the vessel.

The system will improve the crew’s ability to survey the actual structural loading of the vessel and at the same time provide decision support on how to reduce environmental loads by e.g. suggesting speed and/or heading changes.

The project has focused on developing innovative sensors for relative wave motions, green water on deck and structural loading of the hull girder. These sensor signals have been combined with information from traditional sensors onboard, and all sensor information is fused together in one mathematical model capable of estimating the actual wave spectrum.

The system makes it easy for the crew to operate the vessel within predefined structural and seakeeping criteria.

The SeaSense system will alert the crew in case of critical values and/or critical trends, propose alternative speed and heading combinations and predict the consequences on seakeeping performance.

The SeaSense system has been tested on a Danish Navy vessel for 8 months and was installed on an A.P. Møller-Mærsk container ship in december 2003.  

SeaSense is a project partly financed by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and the partners are The Danish Naval Material Command, A.P. Møller-Mærsk, Lyngsø Marine, Danish Technical University Department of Mechanical Engineering and FORCE Technology.