Dr. Richard J. Gran, President and CEO
In 1962 Dr. Gran was part of the design team that developed the Lunar Module Digital Autopliot. This effort, along with a similar effort on the Command Service Module, resulted in the first all digital control system ever flown on a manned vehicle. The methods used, the difficulties of working with a late 1950's vintage computer, and the way that this system would be designed today using MATLAB and Simulink are described in an article describing this work. Download the article from the web site by clicking on the button below:
This experience led to a life-long pursuit of methods for improving the design of complex systems. At Grumman Dr. Gran participated in R&D on a wide variety of unique systems:
The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton, where he developed the control system for the plasma position and current.
The X-29 Digital Fly-by-wire control system.
Research on the control of flexible systems.
When Dr. Gran left Northrop Grumman in 1995, after a distinguished 33 year career, he was the Director of Advanced Concepts. In this position he was responsible for the development of many new products including a unique magnetic levitation vehicle. He created a control system design model and simulation at that time that has been recreated and documented by Maplesoft. The model he created (using Maple and Maplesim) and the documentation of that model (in PDF format) can be downloaded by clicking the Maglev App button below and then, after the Maplesoft site opens, clicking on the appropriate icon under the “Toolkit” tab.
Advanced Concepts also created and marketed:
A tool called "ProtoBlock" that was the precursor of Simulink
An advanced parallel computing architecture for doing 2D Fast Fourier Transforms for image processing
An IR sensor for tracking traffic flow on highways.
Dr Gran was also responsible for develping a techology strategic plan for Grumman that emphasized the use of computation for rapid R&D.
In 1995, Dr. Gran retired from Grumman and joined The MathWorks as an executive consultant. At The MathWorks he developed many unique examples that demonstrate the power of Simulink. In 2000 Dr. Gran left the MathWorks to devote full time to the consulitng efforts of MAC, but MAC is still a MathWorks consultant.
Many of the examples that are shipped with Simulink as demos were created by Dr. Gran. In addition, he created a Simulink example for analyzing an escapement in a pendulum clock that was published in the IEEE Control Systems magazine (the article is also available by clicking on the button below:
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