By Michael Watkins

Jim Doty's interest in math and science began the night he sat in his parent's living room and watched Astronaut Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew land and ultimately walk on the moon. The year was 1969, and while Armstrong's historic feat left a lasting impression on Doty, it was a different man who provided the inspiration that eventually led to his career choice.
 
"Anyone with even a little bit of interest in engineering couldn't help being swept up in the excitement of aerospace technology in those days, but my greatest influence was my father," said Doty, who was raised in Elkhart, Ind., about 100 miles east of Chicago. "He was an engineer, and he would work in our basement on electronics for his radio-controlled model airplanes and other projects.

"At the time, I thought of engineering as more of a hobby - something you do in your basement - but not as a career," he continued.

That thinking quickly changed when Doty began attending Purdue University, and it didn't take long for him to turn his hobby into a career.

Today, Doty is a principal systems engineer in Communication and Navigation Systems in our Advanced Technology Center. He works with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and inertial technologies, and was one of 10 finalists selected recently for the Rockwell Collins 2007 Corporate Engineer of the Year Award.

"There is a real sense of satisfaction when your contributions are recognized and people tell you they appreciate what you have done," said Doty, who joined Rockwell International in Anaheim, Calif., in 1984. "Being nominated for this award is a great honor."

And, while the recognition is nice, Doty said it's the sense of ownership in what he has created and the camaraderie with his colleagues that keeps him moving forward and excited about his work.

"When you invent a new technology or conceive a new product, it's your baby," said Doty, who holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Purdue University and a master's degree in electrical engineering from The University of Iowa. "You want to see it flourish and succeed."

Target practice

Doty invented Advanced Spinning Vehicle Navigation (ASVN), a GPS technology that brings a capability to the projectile market segment that was not possible before.

"We had a very short time to deliver a flight-worthy GPS receiver to our customer," said Doty. "The receiver needed to output an accurate once-per-revolution 'up-pulse' to enable our customers' guidance system to steer an artillery shell to the target."

To meet this aggressive schedule, Doty devised a way to modify an existing GPS receiver to add the needed ASVN functions. For the first time, GPS was successfully used to provide roll angle information for artillery shells that spin at 300 revolutions per second.

"The technology Jim conceived and developed allows for 2-D path trajectory correction of artillery shells and also provides improved GPS jamming immunity, roll-angle determination and attitude determination without gyros," said Principal Engineering Manager James Jantzen, who nominated Doty for our company's highest engineering honor. "Jim is known across our company as an expert in inertial systems. He's conducted research development in device technology and was a key member of the team that created our Fiber Optic Gyro device about a decade ago."

In addition to his work with Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Doty has helped define options for future avionics architectures and analyzed sensor performance requirements for a number of our company's systems.

With a total of nine patents - four related to ASVN technology - he is an individual admired and respected by many people across our company, including Ed Hancock, former principal program manager in the GPS Missiles and Munitions area and now the principal product manager in Business and Regional Systems Product Management.

"After witnessing our customer's system, which used our new ASVN GPS receiver guide the projectile toward the target with unprecedented accuracy, a veteran U.S. Army representative told me that it was quite possibly the most impressive thing that he had witnessed in his 40-year career," said Hancock. "He said that it has the potential to revolutionize the artillery business."
 
- Michael Watkins is a freelance writer.