Abstract: Autonomous and accurate positioning of roadheader is the key to realize intelligent and unmanned heading face. The combination of strapdown inertial navigation and odometer is an ideal positioning scheme for roadheader. The positioning error of strapdown inertial navigation accumulates with time and the position and posture perception capability of single odometer is limited. In order to solve the above problems, a roadheader combined positioning method based on strapdown inertial navigation and differential odometer is proposed by introducing differential odometer as auxiliary positioning on the basis of strapdown inertial navigation. The realization of the method consists of three parts: position and posture perception based on strapdown inertial navigation, dead reckoning based on differential odometer, and data fusion based on Kalman filtering. The reference displacement and attitude angle of roadheader in navigation coordinate system are obtained by strapdown inertial navigation. The differential odometer is composed of two odometers installed on the left and right tracks of the roadheader, and the dead reckoning of the roadheader is calculated by the differential odometer. Kalman filter is designed according to the error equation of strapdown inertial navigation and differential odometer. The difference between the position and posture data of roadheader obtained by strapdown inertial navigation and differential odometer is used as the input of Kalman filter. The output value of Kalman filter is used to correct and compensate the strapdown inertial navigation data. The validity judgment of odometer data is integrated into the combined positioning method, so that the influence of track slipping on the positioning precision is avoided. The positioning experiment of roadheader is carried out in the simulated roadway. The results show that the heading angle error measured by the combined positioning method can be controlled within 0.6° and the position error can be controlled within 0.19 m. The method has high positioning precision.