Career
Maurice S. Gyer served in the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. He was discharged in Japan, where he continued to support the US Army’s mapping and geodetic activities. He returned to the United States and was employed in industry where he developed computer applications for mapping and photogrammetry under contract to DoD agencies. This included techniques for very large least-squares adjustments, Kalman filter based processing of precise astro-inertial attitude system data, computer-aided extraction of terrain elevation and cartographic feature data from stereoscopic imagery.
Employers include DBA Systems, The Analytic Sciences Corp., Perkin Elmer Corp., Science Applications International Corp. As a consultant he continued to support DoD and commercial satellite imaging programs. Clients included Perkin Elmer, Martin-Marietta, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and Harris Corp. He participated in development of automatic target recognition design system for the Air Force’s LANTIRN program and pioneered in the photogrammetric application of panoramic and push broom imaging sensors on satellite platforms.
One of his most significant contributions, Rational Functions, has been used extensively by the Defense Mapping Agency in their Digital Production System. This practical model for exploiting satellite digital image data is currently applied worldwide and facilitated the development of the Google Earth technology. There is no published reference for the technology.