1. Inertial navigation principle

1.1 General

The principle of inertial navigation is to use the measurement of the vehicle's absolute motion, taking into account the existence of the local gravity field, to determine the vehicle's position and speed.

Simply put, the sensor part of an inertial locator can be likened to a point mass m, held inside a box by a link, such as a spring. When the vehicle is in motion, this spring exerts a force on m which tends to bring the mass m back to its origin.