A New Algorithm for Strapped-Down Inertial Navigation

When a whole-number digital computer, rather than an incremental digital computer, is used to solve the strapped-down inertial navigation computational problem, the approximate direct solution of the direction-cosines matrix equation is no longer the optimal algorithm. The Euler parameters are demonstrated to afford improved accuracy and reduced computation time when used in an appropriate algorithm. A new method of classifying the transformation errors is developed and used.