Notable Innovations
- Mark 14 Gunsight - improved gunsight accuracy of anti-aircraft guns used aboard naval vessels in WWII
- SPIRE - forerunner of autopilot systems now used in commercial aviation; advanced the accuracy and safety of airplane navigation
- GEORGE — World’s first algebraic compiler
- Q-guidance equation
- Apollo Guidance Computer - first deployed computer to exploit integrated circuit technology of on-board, autonomous navigation in space
- Digital Fly-by-wire - control system that allowed a pilot to control the aircraft without being connected mechanically to the aircraft’s control surfaces
- Fault-tolerant Computing – several computers work on a task simultaneously. If any one of the computers fails, the others can take over a vital capability when the safety of an aircraft or other system is at stake.
- Micro-electromechanical (MEMS) technologies
- Autonomous systems algorithms - autonomous rendezvous and docking of spacecraft; systems for underwater vehicles
- GPS coupled with inertial navigation system - allows for continuous navigation when the vehicle or system goes into a GPS-denied environment
Read more about this topic: Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or innovations:
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)