Historical Perspectives on Inertial Navigation

Join us and former Institute of Navigation Historial Marvin May for a history of inertial navigation.

Inertial navigation is used in a wide range of applications including the navigation of aircraft, tactical and strategic missiles, spacecraft, submarines and ships. It is also embedded in some mobile phones for purposes of mobile phone location and tracking.

Mr. Marvin B. May is recognized by the navigation community as an expert in geophysical navigation and has made many significant contributions in the fields of geophysical navigation, inertial navigation, and GPS that have significantly advanced military capabilities.

His contributions date back to the earliest applications of gravity and bathymetry. In addition to gravity and bathymetry, Mr. May also has strong expertise in GPS. From 1987-1996, Mr. May was the chief analyst of the GPS Division for the Navy's GPS Central Engineering Activity which was responsible for analysis and integration of GPS on numerous DoD platforms. He led the team that specified and tested the first military embedded GPS Inertial Navigation Assembly (GINA) and was the project engineer and innovator for the Simulated Inertial GPS Navigation Laboratory (SIGNaL) concept.

Mr. May has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the CCNY, a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from NYU, and courses towards a DEE degree at Polytechnic Institute of New York. He also is a registered Professional Engineer. Throughout most of his career, Mr. May has provided education and training at both the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as through short courses that cover a large diversity of topics. He developed and taught Master's degree navigation courses at Wilkes University and also managed Penn State Applied Research Laboratory's (ARL) Navigation Education Program.

Mr. May's navigation service includes over 30 years as an Institute of Navigation (ION) member. In this capacity, he has written over 25 articles on navigation history for ION's Newsletter. His service has included participation on the Defense Science Board Subcommittee for GPS Jamming, the Navy's Research Advisory Committee for NAVWAR as well as serving as a member of the Navigator of the Navy's Subject Matter Expert team. He has been a session chair for numerous navigation symposia and has written or co-authored over 25 papers for navigation symposium proceedings. He is a recipient of the ION's Weems Award.