1. William L "Red" Whittaker was born on 1948 and is an American roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.
11 Facts About Red Whittaker
1. 2.
Red Whittaker led Tartan Racing to its first-place victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge Urban Challenge and brought Carnegie Mellon University the two million dollar prize.
3.
Previously, Whittaker competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge, placing second and third place simultaneously in the Grand Challenge Races.
4.
Red Whittaker founded and led Carnegie Mellon University's team in the Google Lunar X Prize.
5.
Today, Red Whittaker continues this work through NASA contracts in the form of MoonRanger, a planetary rover in development designed to quickly and autonomously explore the surface of the Moon.
6.
Red Whittaker spent his childhood in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where his father was an explosives salesman and his mother was a chemist.
7.
Red Whittaker matriculated at Princeton University, but interrupted his studies to join the United States Marines.
8.
Red Whittaker returned to Princeton to earn his bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1973 and then attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned his master's degree in 1975 and his Ph.
9.
In 1987, Whittaker co-founded RedZone Robotics to develop and sell robots that could operate in hazardous environments and situations too dangerous for humans.
10.
Red Whittaker has led teams that have created robots designed to search for fallen meteorites in the ice fields of Antarctica, climb into the craters of active volcanoes in Alaska and Antarctica, and explore the terrain of Mars.
11.
Red Whittaker has led teams at Carnegie Mellon to build self-driving cars that have participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge since the contest's inception.