Inertia Navigation Systems

Abstract

The object of this paper is to present various practical solutions to the problems of inertia navigation in a descriptive rather than a mathematical form. Inertia navigation is an automatic bump of locality, a dead-reckoning device which, starting from a known point, seeks to find position. Other dead-reckoning devices measure speed, which is only relative to the fluid sea or air. Inertia navigation measures accelerations, which are absolute, and hence builds up a measure of speed. The accelerometer is, therefore, a good starting point for our survey.

Inertial Navigation in Relation to Animal Navigation

“…Among the more interesting features of inertial navigation systems in relation to animal navigation (which includes navigation over distances as small as those of the laboratory maze for rats and mice, and of thousands of miles for certain species of birds, fish and amphibia) is the fact that the systems in their basic form are self-contained since inertial navigation is based fundamentally on Newton's laws of motion, and hence position and distance travelled are obtained by double integration of accelerations measured within the vehicle itself. 1 . 2 Another interesting characteristic is that the path from starting point to goal can be either a straight line (or perhaps, say, a great circle) or completely arbitrary.…”

The Information to be Displayed on an Automatic System in the Air

“…An inertial system, consisting of a platform and its associated computer, can be used to provide an output of velocity or of position, depending on whether the second integration operation is carried out. In a very clear paper read to this Institute, Anderson 2 has described the errors present in the output of an inertial system. These rise initially as the square or cube of time, although the final pattern is the characteristic 84-minute oscillation about a steadily increasing component due to gyro drift.…”