Marine Fiber Optic and Spinning Mass Gyrocompasses

One of the key aspects of modern navigation fundamentally depends on precise and current information that describes ships position and heading. In order to provide this information, different technologies have been implemented and used onboard ships throughout the maritime history such as celestial and terrestrial navigation or magnetic compass systems. First recent major advance has been achieved with implementation of first sufficiently sophisticated mechanical gyrocompass which was on the trail of today's modern mechanical gyrocompasses by Hermann Anschutz-Kaempfe in 1906. This had further influenced greater development and research with respect to gyrocompass manufacturing technology and measurement techniques. This knowledge led to the development and wide scale implementation of stable and precise modern gyrocompasses as they are today, however it has been realized that fundamental errors related to gyrocompass technology can never be fully mitigated. Fiber optic compass technology can eliminate or mitigate errors related to gyroscope-based technology and has been frequently researched and developed as a comparable solution to the commonly used gyrocompass. This paper presents historical overview of gyrocompass research and development, principles of operation, associated errors in measurement and comparative analysis both mechanical and fiber optic gyrocompass.