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:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)