Originally Posted by
stilton
Most jet transports still use inertial units as a source for navigation and their inputs provide data for aircraft instrumentation
Of course inertial position data is updated by GPS but, especially in light of recent events those signals can’t always be depended on
INS by itself is still an outstanding technology, independent, self contained with no need for any outside signals, so good it allowed us to go to the moon
My question is, are today’s inertial navigators being improved on to refine their performance and improve their accuracy, or have their parameters remained static for some time ?
I believe that last major improvement in stand alone INS was the introduction of the ring laser gyros - a huge improvement over the old spinning gyros.
I suspect there have been subtle improvements in the ring laser gyros due to the incremental improvements in the associated electronics. But I don't think the basic technology has changed aside from being able to use GPS updates.