Advanced Spinning-Vehicle Navigation - A New Technique in Navigation of Munitions

James H. Doty

Abstract:	Many vehicles, such as artillery shells and spacecraft, spin rapidly during at least a portion of their flight. Rapid rotation greatly complicates inertially-aided navigation because even very small gyro scale factor errors accumulate to give very large, and rapidly changing, attitude errors. Traditionally designers have been forced to resort to using complex and costly mechanical de- spinning systems in these applications. A cost-effective technique is needed to provide inertially-aided, interference-resistant navigation for rapidly spinning vehicles. Advanced Spinning-Vehicle Navigation (ASVN) provides an innovative, low-cost solution to rotational determination and navigation of rapidly rotating vehicles. This paper describes two important aspects of ASVN: GPS roll-angle determination, and Coriolis pitch and yaw rate sensing. Together these techniques provide a practical low-cost technique for providing inertially-aided GPS navigation in spinning vehicles without the need for costly de-spinning systems or high-accuracy gyros. The general design approach is described and preliminary data is shown for a proof-of-concept GPS rotation angle- tracking demonstrator.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2001) June 11 - 13, 2001 Albuquerque, NM
Pages:	745 - 754
Cite this article:	Doty, James H., "Advanced Spinning-Vehicle Navigation - A New Technique in Navigation of Munitions," Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2001), Albuquerque, NM, June 2001, pp. 745-754.
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