Control, navigation, and guidance

Self-contained systems providing control and navigation for vehicles of all kinds use gyroscopic elements to maintain reference directions with respect to inertial space. Sensors for resultant gravity field and inertial reaction forces along input axes determine the vertical and also linear velocities with respect to inertial space. These components divided by an equivalent Earth radius transfer the motion to Earth coordinates in which integration gives location. Corrections for Earth's rotation projected in and perpendicular to the horizontal plane are made as computed cosine and sine projections of Earth's angular velocity. Current systems result with the order of fractional miles per hour performance.