WASHINGTON – U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) researchers have developed a patent-pending continuous 3-D-cooled atom beam interferometer derived from a patented cold and continuous beam of atoms to explore atom-interferometry-based inertial measurement systems as a path to reduce drift in Naval navigation systems.
Inertial navigation is a self-contained navigation technique in which measurements provided by accelerometers and gyroscopes are used to track the position and orientation of an object relative to a known starting point, orientation, and velocity. Quantum inertial navigation is a new field of research and development that can increase inertial measurement accuracy by orders of magnitude.