Wired Science

Winning the Robot Race

William “Red” Whittaker remembers thinking about his future career as a young boy.  His interests lay in science and technology, but he wanted to enter a field that had yet to reach its full potential. Whittaker also wanted to make sure he’d always have the opportunity to work with his hands. When he learned he could build robots for a living, he knew he’d found his calling. In an interview with Space.com he summed up his career in robotics, “It’s what I was born for.”

Whittaker grew up in the tiny Pennsylvania town of Hollidaysburg. The son of a chemist and an explosives salesman, he was predisposed to a career in science.   After a stint in the United States Marine Corps, Whittaker studied civil engineering at Princeton University, earning his degree in 1973. He then made his way to Carnegie Mellon University, where he continued his studies. He earned a Masters degree in 1975, then went on to complete his Ph.D. in1979.

The same year that Whittaker completed his Ph.D., the United States suffered its worst nuclear disaster to date at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Immediately thereafter, Whittaker and his colleagues were enlisted to designed robots that could inspect the nearby disaster site.  Whittaker’s work on this project led to the creation of the Fields Robotic Center at Carnegie Mellon, for which he now serves as Director. 

Whittaker’s experience with the disaster would shape his career. "Motivations are in the events of our time,” he told Space.com. Indeed, Whittaker would go on to create robots to help with the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, and developed the Groundhog robot to map and search collapsed mines after the Quecreek Mine rescue in 2002.

Now Whittaker has his sights on the high profile robot competitions that are popping up all over the research landscape, such as the DARPA Grand Challenge.  First staged in 2004 and conceived as a competition to showcase the best in autonomous robotics research, the eponymous Pentagon wing known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) offered a prize to the team of researchers who could build a driverless vehicle that could race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in the fastest time.  Whittaker’s team, Red Team Racing, delivered a vehicle they called Sandstorm and enjoyed  modest success by traveling farther than any other competitor.  Unfortunately, the vehicle didn’t complete the course, so no award was given. In 2005 Red Team Racing entered both the Sandstorm and H1ghlander. They finished 2nd and 3rd respectively, but the success was bittersweet, as Whittaker’s former student and colleague, Sebastian Thrun, led the winning team from Stanford to victory with a modified Volkswagen Touareg dubbed Stanley.

In 2007, Darpa staged its latest autonomous vehicle race. The Urban Challenge event took place on November 3 at the decommissioned Georgia Airforce Base in Victorville, California.  The vehicles had to traverse a simulated suburban landscape obstacle course called “Darpatown.” Once again, Whittaker had to face off against the Stanford Team, this time as the head of the Tartan Racing Team. Whittaker and Tartan got the best of his Stanford rivals as his vehicle, Boss (a converted Chevy Tahoe), took first place and the $2 million dollar prize.

Looking ahead, Whittaker only sees more challenges and   opportunities. After the announcement of the Google Lunar X Prize at the Wired Nextfest, Whittaker immediately threw his hat in the ring by emailing his team’s entry the very next day. In Whittaker’s view, our robotic future has arrived, but when asked what to expect from the world of robotics he is quick to add, “the best is yet to come.”