Rudolf E. Kálmán | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Rudolf Emil Kálmán[1] May 19, 1930 |
| Died | July 2, 2016(2016-07-02) (aged 86)[2] |
| Citizenship | Hungary United States |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University |
| Known for | Kalman filter Kalman problem Kalman decomposition Kalman–Yakubovich–Popov lemma Observability State-space representation |
| Awards | IEEE Medal of Honor(1974) Rufus Oldenburger Medal(1976) Kyoto Prize(1985) Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award(1997) Charles Stark Draper Prize(2008) National Medal of Science(2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Electrical Engineering Mathematics Applied Engineering Systems Theory |
| Institutions | Stanford University University of Florida Swiss Federal Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | John Ragazzini |
| Doctoral students | |
Rudolf Emil Kálmán[3] (May 19, 1930 – July 2, 2016) was aHungarian-Americanelectrical engineer,mathematician, and inventor. He is most noted for his co-invention and development of theKalman filter, a mathematical algorithm that is widely used insignal processing,control systems, andguidance, navigation and control. For this work, U.S. PresidentBarack Obama awarded Kálmán theNational Medal of Science on October 7, 2009.[4]
Rudolf Kálmán was born inBudapest, Hungary, in 1930 to Otto and Ursula Kálmán (née Grundmann). After emigrating to theUnited States in 1943, he earned his bachelor's degree in 1953 and his master's degree in 1954, both from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, inelectrical engineering. Kálmán completed his doctorate in 1957 atColumbia University inNew York City.[5]
Kálmán worked as a Research Mathematician at theResearch Institute for Advanced Studies inBaltimore, Maryland, from 1958 until 1964. He was a professor atStanford University from 1964 until 1971, and then a Graduate Research Professor and the Director of the Center for Mathematical System Theory, at theUniversity of Florida from 1971 until 1992. He periodically returned toFontainebleau from 1969 to 1972 atMINES ParisTech where he served as scientific advisor for Centre de recherches en automatique. Starting in 1973, he also held the chair of Mathematical System Theory at theSwiss Federal Institute of Technology inZurich,Switzerland.
Kálmán died on the morning of July 2, 2016, at his home inGainesville, Florida.[6]
Kálmán was anelectrical engineer by his undergraduate and graduate education atMIT andColumbia University, and he was noted for his co-invention of theKalman filter (or Kalman-Bucy Filter), which is a mathematical technique widely used in thedigital computers ofcontrol systems,navigation systems,avionics, and outer-space vehicles to extract asignal from a longsequence of noisy or incomplete measurements, usually those done by electronic andgyroscopic systems.
Kálmán's ideas on filtering were initially met with vast skepticism, so much so that he was forced to do the first publication of his results inmechanical engineering, rather than in electrical engineering or systems engineering. Kálmán had more success in presenting his ideas, however, while visitingStanley F. Schmidt at theNASA Ames Research Center in 1960. This led to the use of Kálmán filters during theApollo program, and furthermore, in the NASASpace Shuttle, in Navysubmarines, and in unmannedaerospace vehicles and weapons, such ascruise missiles.[7]
Kálmán published several seminal papers during the sixties, which rigorously established what is now known as thestate-space representation of dynamical systems. He introduced the formal definition of a system, the notions ofcontrollability andobservability, eventually leading to theKalman decomposition. Kálmán also gave groundbreaking contributions to the theory ofoptimal control and provided, in his joint work with J. E. Bertram, a comprehensive and insightful exposure ofstability theory for dynamical systems. He also worked with B. L. Ho on theminimal realization problem, providing the well known Ho-Kalman algorithm.
Kálmán was a foreign member of theFrench,Hungarian andRussian Academies of Sciences,[8] as well as a member of theNational Academy of Sciences, theNational Academy of Engineering,[1] and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[9] He has been awarded many honorary doctorates from other universities. In 2012 he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[10]
Kálmán received theIEEE Medal of Honor in 1974, theIEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, the Inamori foundation'sKyoto Prize in Advanced Technology in 1985, theSteele Prize of theAmerican Mathematical Society in 1987, theRichard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award in 1997,[11] and the National Academy of Engineering'sCharles Stark Draper Prize in 2008.
Kálmán also received an Honorary Doctorate fromHeriot-Watt University in 1990.[12] and an Honorary doctorate from the Politecnico di Milano in 2012. Kalman died a few weeks before the conferment of the latter doctorate, so that his wife Dina attended the ceremony on his behalf, held in the Conference room of the Departement of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano on 12 September 2016.
