Anyone exercising outdoor activities as scouting, hunting, or wildlife photographing -not to mention walking in the city -plus those of us engaged with defense activities can state it is more convenient to get lost if one knows where this happens. Perhaps this is one of the key reasons why methods and technologies for navigation have been an area of continuing efforts and interest.After the introduction of fast moving vehicles, and later when defensive or hostile weapons came into use, it was not sufficient to know where the platform was located but it was really vital to be aware of its momentary alignment, of course, in a three dimensional space. New challenges were put to the shoulders of the navigator. When time, equipment. and location allow, navigation relying on external references such as radio beacons on ground or up in the space orbits are often preferred. However, such cooperative systems may not be available, or their performance is inadequate for the short time constants of platform motion. We are thus forced to use autonomous navigation modes. It is here that inertial navigation systems have. for long, been the way to go. First, we had simple gimbals, the mechanical spinning gyroscopes and later came fiber optic laser devices. "Strapdown Inertial Navigation Technology" by Prof.David Titterton and Dr. John Weston is a new entry to this complicated field. surely of interest to many Systems readers.A brief quantitative study of this boo k indicates 558 relatively dense-packed pages containing 15 chapters, four appendices. an alphabetical Index of some 1000 words and a List of Symbols. The size of individual chapters varies from less than about ten pages to over 60. Line drawings (bQth graphic presentations of functions and pictures of equipment constructions) and photographs are extensively used so that their total number is roughly 250.Unavoidably a book about navigation gets mathematical in nature and here the amount of equations is close to 390. Matrices, vectors, and integrals are needed constantly. The authors have not followed a strict logic in the internal arrangement. This can be seen in the treatment of tables. The first half of "Strapdown Inertial Navigation Technology" has many tables without any numbering, just data and headings placed in small rectangular boxes. However, later the authors have selected conventional numbering and have discarded frames. Due to this, we are unable to give any value for the amount of tabulated information. Most publishers seem to prefer references placed after each chapter.
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