The operating attitude of a shearer based on a three-dimensional (3D) space scale is the necessary basic information for realizing intelligent mining. Aiming to address the problem of the insufficient perception accuracy of shearers, in this paper, the rotation model of the actual turning mechanism of the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) of shearers is established, and the error propagation characteristics of different single-axis rotation modulation schemes are revealed. Through theory and simulation, the optimal rotation modulation scheme is determined to be the improved four-position turn–stop modulation with a rotation of <360°. The experiment shows that the 24 h positioning error of this scheme is 3.7 nmile, and the heading angle changes by 0.06°, which proves that this scheme can effectively improve the attitude perception accuracy of the inertial navigation system (INS). The field application of the shearer operating attitude perception based on this scheme shows that the positioning error after error compensation is 17% of that before compensation, and the heading angle error is 75% of that before compensation, which verifies that this scheme can significantly improve the accuracy of shearer operating attitude perception in field applications. This scheme can achieve higher precision perception accuracy based on SINS and has broad application prospects in the field of high-precision pose perception of coal mining machines, roadheaders, and other equipment.