Here are some of my successful products, projects, and other innovations:
Lamb Lisp is an implementation of the Scheme dialect of Lisp. LISP is the original language of artificial intelligence, and is the second-oldest programming language still in use (after Fortran). The Scheme variant has many features familiar to programmers in other languages (lexical scoping, "duck" typing) and advanced features such as first-class procedures and tail recursion. Lamb Lisp has additional features that are important in high-performance control systems, such as adaptive real-time garbage collection, hashed environments, and direct integration with Arduino-style hardware interfaces.
This high-performance sensing system operates in an electrically noisy environment, where its inputs and outputs require substantial confidence measures to ensure actionability. The remote storage subsystem is additionally designed to be immune to corruption due to power supply anomalies.
The "Near Sky" device was intended to take advantage of the privileged position available on municipal telephone, power, and lighting poles. The prototype power-and-radio device had already been built when I joined the company, but it was a solution without a good problem description. I identified the "near sky" as the branded market terrain to be exploited The "Near Sky" is that layer above our heads, but below aircraft altitude (Middle Sky) and satellites (Far Sky). "Near Sky" became the brand of the corporate partnership program in addition to the product name, and its evolution led to several patents.
The "Torana" server provided a way to control IT devices from a campus environmental control system. When idle, these devices use little energy individually, but a fleet of hundreds or thousands of such devices wastes a large amount of energy in aggregate. Torana provides a way to turn these devices off in groups, along with lighting, heating, and other building functions that adapt to usage patterns. This effort resulted in a patent.
This instrument detects tiny changes in transformer geometry, a potential failure indicator, used as part of an ongoing program of asset monitoring by electrical utility companies. This project was developed from concept to trade show in 6 months, with all new chassis, analog and digital board designs, firmware, and Windows application.
The "Advantys" project was the first attempt to use Controller Area Networks (CAN) in industrial automation settings. The project resulted in a successful product line and several patents that improve network performance in these kinds of applications.
Project Unity began as a multinational task force responsible for defining the company's next generation automation products, after France's Groupe Schneider (now Schneider Electric) acquired several electrical distribution and control companies, such as Square D and Modicon in the US, and Merlin Gerin and Telemecanique and Europe. I was one of 14 people chosen for the initial team. We used some innovative approaches to reduce complexity and improve quality, such as automatically generated database schemas, data-driven configuration editing with related code generation.
I joined this project near the end of its life, completing 3 major subsystems during a time of high turnover in the industry. Modicon Concept received the Editor’s Choice award from Control Engineering Magazine the following year.
Modicon State Language was a Graphical State/Transition programming language targeted at industrial automation market. The innovative approach was key to more than $40M contracts with major U.S. auto manufacturers and food processors. The system allowed remote programming and modification while executing, and had strong machine diagnostic capabilities. The final release included native code generator 14 times faster than previous interpreted version, Code generator implemented in just 110K of source code (M4, C, 80x86 assembler).
Programmable Logic Controller provides migration path for customers with legacy (circa 1978) controllers. Drop-in replacement allows customers to upgrade control strategy without rewiring plant. 80186 & 8051/UPI452. More than 3100 units sold; gross revenues greater than $10M.
Before there was a cloud, there was an internet. And before there was an internet, there were many separate, purpose-built, and increasingly sophisticated networks. This was one of them.
This system characterized vibration-induced noise in a cryogenically cooled imaging system, under normal (i.e., cold and vibrating) operating conditions. The software development effort had months of digital signal processing at its heart. The control system required simultaneous 3-axis vibration control with a prescribed spectrum from 0 Hz to 20 KHz. To accomplish this, 3 Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) were required every control loop. Not just fast, but really fast.
This system tested "optically improved" infrared detectors, designed for use in tanks and aircraft. The software controlled a "challenge" IR imaging system, designed to verify the "stealthy" nature of the product against an adversary. The laser spot-scanning system used high-speed data acquisition and precision motor control techniques to produce 1MB image in 30 seconds, vs. competitor’s 4 hours.
The "Partitioning Algorithm" provided a bounded solution to the problem of minimizing the number of measurements when calibrating imaging elements, regardless of the pixel variation in any particular test unit.
This was an optimized preamplifier switching algorithm, used on highly parallel infrared test equipment to minimize the production test time. This switching algorithm worked in tandem with the "Partitioning Algorithm" described elsewhere, in a producer-consumer arrangement.
