Visualize error propagation in dead-reckoning navigation systems and understand why external aiding is critical for underwater vehicles
This interactive simulator demonstrates how inertial navigation errors grow over time due to sensor imperfections. Gyroscope and accelerometer biases cause unbounded position drift that accumulates quadratically. Configure IMU parameters to see how sensor quality affects navigation accuracy.
Inertial navigation errors grow due to the double integration of acceleration and integration of angular rate:
Where the error state vector contains:
Accelerometer biases directly cause velocity errors through integration. These velocity errors then integrate again to cause position errors, resulting in quadratic growth: