2 Introduction
crude measurements of direction to be made. Together with coarse
nautical charts, the compass made it possible to sail along rhumb lines
between key destinations (i.e., following a compass bearing). A seriesFigure 1.1
Quadrant. A tool
used to measure
angles.
of instruments were then gradually invented that made it possible to
measure the angle between distant points (i.e., cross-staff, astrolabe,
quadrant, sextant, theodolite) with increasing accuracy.
These instruments allowed latitude to be determined at sea fairly
readily using celestial navigation. For example, in the Northern hemi-
sphere the angle between the North Star, Polaris, and the horizon pro-
vides the latitude. Longitude, however, was a much more difficult prob-
lem. It was known early on that an accurate timepiece was the missing
piece of the puzzle for the determination of longitude. The behaviours
of key celestial bodies appear differently at different locations on the
Earth. Knowing the time of day therefore allows longitude to be in-
ferred. In 1764, British clockmaker John Harrison built the first accu-Figure 1.2
Harrison’s H4. The
first clock able to
keep accurate time
at sea, enabling
determination of
longitude.
rate portable timepiece that effectively solved the longitude problem;
a ship’s longitude could be determined to within about ten nautical
miles.
Estimation theory also finds its roots in astronomy. The method of
least squares was pioneered
1
by Gauss, who developed the technique to
Carl Friedrich
Gauss (1777-1855)
was a German
mathematician
who contributed
significantly to
many fields
including statistics
and estimation.
minimize the impact of measurement error in the prediction of orbits.
Gauss reportedly used least squares to predict the position of the dwarf
planet Ceres after passing behind the Sun, accurate to within half a
degree (about nine months after it was last seen). The year was 1801
and Gauss was 23. Later, in 1809, he proved that the least-squares
method is optimal under the assumption of normally distributed errors.
Most of the classic estimation techniques in use today can be directly
related to Gauss’ least-squares method.
The idea of fitting models to minimize the impact of measurement
error carried forward, but it was not until the middle of the twenti-
eth century that estimation really took off. This was likely correlated
with the dawn of the computer age. In 1960, K´alm´an published two
Rudolf Emil
K´alm´an (1930-) is
a Hungarian-born
American electrical
engineer,
mathematician,
and inventor.
landmark papers that have defined much of what has followed in the
field of state estimation. First, he introduced the notion of observability
(Kalman, 1960a), which tells us when a state can be inferred from a
set of measurements in a dynamic system. Second, he introduced an
optimal framework for estimating a system’s state in the presence of
measurement noise (Kalman, 1960b); this classic technique for linear
systems (whose measurements are corrupted by Gaussian noise) is fa-
mously known as the Kalman filter, and has been the workhorse of esti-
mation for the more than 50 years since its inception. Although used in
many fields, it has been widely adopted in aerospace applications. Re-
1
There is some debate as to whether Adrien Marie Legendre might have come up with
least squares before Gauss.