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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Robert was one: of a handful of "mechanically minded individuals" who in 1960 began his systems engineering career with the U.S. Army at Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Robert's involvement with aviation was initially in airborne fire control systems and included the development of stabilized optical tracking sights for" ^the UH1-B helicopter during the early phases of the Viet Nam War. During this period his achievements involved the determination of the effects of vibration on manual fire control in helicopters; modeling and simulation associated with the dynamic response of gunners in tactical fire control situations and the conceptual development of the On-line Automatic Tracking Error Data Reduction System (OLATEDRS). The OLATEDRS was to provide a "means for obtaining airborne tracking error data without having to extract it from gun camera film. All three of these efforts were accomplished under his direction at the Franklin Institute Research Labs in Philadelphia. Robert was later assigned to work on the Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS) and was highly instrumental in the successful development of its Dynamic Field Evaluator (DFE), a mini-computer controlled, virtual reality, weapon system tester. The development of the Dynamic Field Evaluator was motivated by both the OLATEDRS and a need :to measure the real time performance and effectiveness of the VADS. Robert's accomplishments here helped to extend the state of the art in weapon system test and evaluation at that point in time. This accomplishment came at a high price though, because it took General Electric, the prime VADS contractor, more then two and a half years to meet specified performance requirements and a great deal of its own money to deliver the DFE to the Army at a contracted fixed price. With the Arsenal's closure in the late 70's, Robert continued to support VADS and DFE development as a private consultant. He contracted with the American Electronics Laboratories (AEL) in Lansdale, Pennsylvania where his efforts (and those of many others) resulted in the successful fielding of the product improved VADS the PIVADS. This work was mainly accomplished before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it continued for awhile thereafter by Robert and a team of engineers and programmers working for his small business, the Systems Engineering Associates Laboratory (SEAL).
Robert also worked for the U.S. Navy in Warminster, Pennsylvania during that same period and contributed to various naval projects including the integration of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers into naval aircraft and helicopters: P-3, S-3 and LAMPS. He retired from the Department of Defense in the late 90's and for a number of years continued as a private contractor to the FAA working on .aviation security, the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) and air traffic control systems.