Why can a digital computer provide nearly continuous navigation information?

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Cruise ship captain in uniform studies navigational charts with a compass on a table in the ship's bridge. — navigation Officers on a passenger ship using charts for navigation.

Digital computers can provide nearly continuous navigation information because they operate at extremely high speeds, making their processing time for navigational calculations virtually instantaneous.1

Unlike earlier analog computers that performed simple, continuous calculations, modern digital computers are capable of rapidly processing complex streams of data—such as speed, direction, and time—from various sensors. By utilizing techniques like Kalman filtering, these computers can weight multiple data inputs based on their quality and integrate them with previous position and velocity solutions to determine the best current estimate of a craft's location. Furthermore, their ability to store information in memory allows them to maintain and update positional data effectively, ensuring that navigation systems can provide real-time information for control purposes.1