Rudolf Kalman
Encyclopedia
Rudolf Emil Kálmán (in Hungarian
Kálmán Rudolf Emil; born May 19, 1930) is a Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematical system theorist, and college professor, who was educated in the United States
, and has done most of his work there. He is currently a retired professor from three different institutes of technology and universities. He is most noted for his co-invention and development of the Kalman filter
, a mathematical formulation that is widely used in control system
s, avionics
, and outer space
manned and unmanned vehicles. For this work, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Kálmán with the National Medal of Science
on October 7, 2009.
. After emigrating to the United States
in 1943, he earned his bachelor's degree in 1953 and his master's degree in 1954, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, in electrical engineering
. Kálmán completed his doctorate in 1957 at Columbia University
in New York City
.
Kálmán worked as a Research Mathematician at the Research Institute for Advanced Studies
in Baltimore, Maryland from 1958 until 1964. He was a professor at Stanford University
from 1964 until 1971, and then a Graduate Research Professor and the Director of the Center for Mathematical System Theory, at the University of Florida
from 1971 until 1992. Starting in 1973, he also held the chair of Mathematical System Theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
in Zürich, Switzerland.
Kálmán is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American National Academy of Engineering
, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. He is a foreign member of the Hungarian, French, and Russian Academies of Science. He has been awarded many honorary doctorates from other universities.
Kálmán received the IEEE Medal of Honor
in 1974, the IEEE Centennial Medal
in 1984, the Inamori foundation's Kyoto Prize
in High Technology in 1985, the Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society
in 1987, the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award
in 1997, and the National Academy of Engineering's Charles Stark Draper Prize
in 2008.
. and Columbia University
, and he is noted for his co-invention of the Kalman filter
(or Kalman-Bucy Filter), which is a mathematical technique widely used in the digital computers of control system
s, navigation
systems, avionics
, and outer-space vehicles to extract a signal
from a long sequence
of noisy and/or incomplete technical measurements, usually those done by electronic and gyroscopic 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 in mechanical engineering
, rather than in electrical engineering or systems engineering. Kálmán had more success in presenting his ideas, however, while visiting Stanley F. Schmidt
at the NASA Ames Research Center
in 1960. This led to the use of Kálmán filters during the Apollo program, and furthermore, in the NASA Space Shuttle
, in Navy submarine
s, and in unmanned aerospace
vehicles and weapons, such as cruise missile
s.
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
Kálmán Rudolf Emil; born May 19, 1930) is a Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematical system theorist, and college professor, who was educated in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and has done most of his work there. He is currently a retired professor from three different institutes of technology and universities. He is most noted for his co-invention and development of the Kalman filter
Kalman filter
In statistics, the Kalman filter is a mathematical method named after Rudolf E. Kálmán. Its purpose is to use measurements observed over time, containing noise and other inaccuracies, and produce values that tend to be closer to the true values of the measurements and their associated calculated...
, a mathematical formulation that is widely used in control system
Control system
A control system is a device, or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or system.There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls...
s, avionics
Avionics
Avionics are electronic systems used on aircraft, artificial satellites and spacecraft.Avionic systems include communications, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems and the hundreds of systems that are fitted to aircraft to meet individual roles...
, and outer space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
manned and unmanned vehicles. For this work, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Kálmán with the National Medal of Science
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and...
on October 7, 2009.
Biography
Rudolf Kálmán was born in BudapestBudapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
. After emigrating to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1943, he earned his bachelor's degree in 1953 and his master's degree in 1954, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
. Kálmán completed his doctorate in 1957 at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Kálmán worked as a Research Mathematician at the Research Institute for Advanced Studies
Research Institute for Advanced Studies
The Baltimore-based Research Institute for Advanced Studies , not to be confused with the better-known Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, was among the several centers for research in the mathematical and physical sciences established throughout the United States after World War...
in Baltimore, Maryland from 1958 until 1964. He was a professor at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
from 1964 until 1971, and then a Graduate Research Professor and the Director of the Center for Mathematical System Theory, at the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
from 1971 until 1992. Starting in 1973, he also held the chair of Mathematical System Theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
ETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
in Zürich, Switzerland.
Kálmán is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
. He is a foreign member of the Hungarian, French, and Russian Academies of Science. He has been awarded many honorary doctorates from other universities.
Kálmán received the IEEE Medal of Honor
IEEE Medal of Honor
The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contribution or an extraordinary career in the IEEE fields of...
in 1974, the IEEE Centennial Medal
IEEE Centennial Medal
The IEEE Centennial Medal was a medal minted and awarded in 1984 to celebrate the Centennial of the founding of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1884.The medal obverse shows 1884 in calligraphic writing and 1984 in an LCD font...
in 1984, the Inamori foundation's Kyoto Prize
Kyoto Prize
The has been awarded annually since 1985 by the Inamori Foundation, founded by Kazuo Inamori. The prize is a Japanese award similar in intent to the Nobel Prize, as it recognizes outstanding works in the fields of philosophy, arts, science and technology...
in High Technology in 1985, the Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
in 1987, the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award
Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award
The Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award is an annual award given by the American Automatic Control Council for achievements in control theory, named after the applied mathematician Richard E. Bellman...
in 1997, and the National Academy of Engineering's Charles Stark Draper Prize
Charles Stark Draper Prize
The National Academy of Engineering annually awards the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Engineering" - the others being the Academy's Russ...
in 2008.
Work
Kálmán is an electrical engineer by his undergraduate and graduate education at M.I.TMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and he is noted for his co-invention of the Kalman filter
Kalman filter
In statistics, the Kalman filter is a mathematical method named after Rudolf E. Kálmán. Its purpose is to use measurements observed over time, containing noise and other inaccuracies, and produce values that tend to be closer to the true values of the measurements and their associated calculated...
(or Kalman-Bucy Filter), which is a mathematical technique widely used in the digital computers of control system
Control system
A control system is a device, or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or system.There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls...
s, navigation
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
systems, avionics
Avionics
Avionics are electronic systems used on aircraft, artificial satellites and spacecraft.Avionic systems include communications, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems and the hundreds of systems that are fitted to aircraft to meet individual roles...
, and outer-space vehicles to extract a signal
Signal processing
Signal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...
from a long sequence
Sequence
In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
of noisy and/or incomplete technical measurements, usually those done by electronic and gyroscopic 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 in mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
, rather than in electrical engineering or systems engineering. Kálmán had more success in presenting his ideas, however, while visiting Stanley F. Schmidt
Stanley F. Schmidt
Stanley F. Schmidt was born in Hollister, California, on January 21, 1926. He received the B.E.E. degree from Marquette University in 1946, and M.S. and Ph.D...
at the NASA Ames Research Center
NASA Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center , is one of the United States of America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration 10 major field centers.The centre is located in Moffett Field in California's Silicon Valley, near the high-tech companies, entrepreneurial ventures, universities, and other...
in 1960. This led to the use of Kálmán filters during the Apollo program, and furthermore, in the NASA Space Shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
, in Navy submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
s, and in unmanned aerospace
Aerospace
Aerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...
vehicles and weapons, such as cruise missile
Cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...
s.
External links
- The Kalman Filter website
- Kyoto Prize
- For Kálmán's PhD students see Rudolf Emil Kálmán on the Mathematics Genealogy Project page.
- Biography of Kalman from the IEEE