Singularity-Free Great-Circle Sailing

Abstract

Traditional approaches to solving great-circle navigation problems (geodesics on a spherical-Earth approximation) involve spherical trigonometry and can have singularities at the poles. We present a singularity-free approach to solving both the direct and the indirect great-circle problems: rotate the coordinate system so that the trajectory is on the equator, compute the trajectory and rotate back. This is done, because great-circle navigation problems are simple on the equator. Such great-circle navigation algorithms can be useful in a number of techniques for ship self-localization.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 26, 2021
Accession Number
AD1143661

Entities

People

  • David F. Crouse

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Cartesian Coordinates
  • Climate Change
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Differential Equations
  • Equations
  • Geodesics
  • Geometry
  • Grids
  • Inertial Navigation
  • Loran
  • Motion Planning
  • Navigation
  • Nonlinear Differential Equations
  • Numbers
  • Surface Waves
  • Trajectories

Readers

  • Linear Algebra
  • Organic Chemistry
  • Robotics and Automation.