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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 that is described in a paper (in pdf format) available by clicking on the button below:

or the entire Maple worksheet that creates a five degree-of-freedom simulation of the vehicle is available by clicking on the button below:

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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