A DEAD-RECKONING LAND VEHICLE NAVIGATION SYSTEM

E. Wall

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The dead-reckoning navigation system described, was designed to meet Canadian Army requirements for a navigation aid which would provide commanders of tracked or wheeled vehicles with continuous, accurate, positional and navigational information. The system permits vehicle movement about the battlefield under conditions of poor visibility such as in darkness, in fogor smoke and in country devoid of landmarks such as desert or arctic not available. The system continuously computes and displays the exact geographical location of the vehicle and the direction in which it is heading. The inputs to the land navigation system are: distance travelled by the vehicle as measured by an odometer drive, and direction of travel obtained from a true north seeking gyro compass. The complete system consists of a Computer, Heading and Position Indicator, Vehicle Position Plotter, Heading Indicator, Gyro Compass and Power Supply. The computer employes a unique and highly accurate mechanical analogue computing element (Ball Resolver) to convert inputs representing distance and direction of travel into electrical output pulses which represent the East/West and Norht/South movement of the vehicle. The commander's Heading and Position Indicator displays the computer outputs (vehicle position) as two four digit map references, and a 0-360° dial continuously indicates the grid heading of the vehicle. The Vehicle Position Plotter provides a continuous pictorial representation of the geographical location of the vehicle and the direction in which it is headed. An illuminated imagen of a positional dot and directional arrow is projected onto the underside of a standard military map attached to the top of the Ploter. This disply enables the navigator to pictorially steer the vehicle along any prescribed course without manual plotting or mental calculations. The Heading Indicator, necessary only in vehicles where the driver is separated from the commander, continuously displays vehicle heading and can be used as a steering aid for a prescribed heading. The system operates from the vehicle battery and employs a static inverter to obtain the alternating current required by the Compass and other systems units. The land vehicle navigation meets the accuracy requirements of 1% of distance traveled.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 12, Number 1
Pages:	77 - 89
Cite this article:	Wall, E., "A DEAD-RECKONING LAND VEHICLE NAVIGATION SYSTEM", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1965, pp. 77-89.
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