Blazing Gyros: The Evolution of Strapdown Inertial Navigation Technology for Aircraft

• Published in: Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics control, and dynamics, 2013-05, Vol.36 (3), p.637-655
• Main Author: Savage, Paul G
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accelerometers; Accuracy; Aeronautics; Aerospace engineering; Aircraft; Aircraft industry; Hijacking; Inertial navigation; Laboratories; Lasers; Navigation systems; Sensors; Software; Software development; Strapdown inertial navigation; Systems design
• ISSN: 0731-5090; 1533-3884
• DOI: 10.2514/1.60211

Paul G. Savage is an internationally recognized expert in the design and testing of strapdown inertial navigation systems, and is the President of Strapdown Associates, Inc., a company he founded in 1980. Strapdown Associates has provided software and engineering services to government agencies and aerospace companies for strapdown inertial system configuration definition, flight software development, system simulation, and testing. Mr. Savage has published and presented several papers on strapdown inertial navigation systems and associated computational elements. From 1974 to 2009, he served as an author/speaker on several NATO AGARD and Research and Technology Organisation technology transfer lecture series tours. From 1981 to 2009, Mr. Savage provided his Introduction to Strapdown Inertial Navigation Systems course to the aerospace industry. Since 2011, he has provided a two-day focused version of the Intro to Strapdown course onsite at host facilities in the continental United States. He has written and published the textbook Strapdown Analytics (available from Strapdown Associates), detailing the analytical aspects of strapdown inertial navigation system design. From 1963 to 1980, Mr. Savage was employed at Honeywell Avionics Division as Senior Principal Engineering Fellow, where he led engineering design teams and provided technical consultation to Honeywell engineering managers for system design, analysis, software development, simulation, and integration/test in the evolutionary development of laser gyro strapdown inertial navigation systems for military and commercial aircraft. From 1971 through 1975, he was the Engineering Manager and System Design Engineer for the strapdown Honeywell Laser Inertial Navigation System (LINS), the first to prove the readiness of laser gyro strapdown inertial navigation technology for aircraft applications, as demonstrated during a landmark flight-test series at Holloman Air Force Base in 1975. Mr. Savage is a graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his BS and MS degrees in aeronautical engineering in 1960. He is a Senior Member of the AIAA. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]