SPEAKER: WILLIAM L. "RED" WHITTAKER
Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics and
ABSTRACT:
SPEAKER BIO:
Projects under Dr. Whittaker's direction include unmanned robots to
explore planetary surfaces and volcano interiors, automation of mining
machines and farm equipment, remote worksystems for nuclear facility
decommissioning, mobile robots for hazardous waste site investigation,
and autonomous land vehicle navigation. Dr. Whittaker has also been
thesis advisor for 17 Ph.D. recipients. Red Whittaker is chief
scientist of the National Robotics Engineering Consortium and cofounder
of Pittsburgh's RedZone Robotics, Inc.
Dr. Whittaker has received numerous awards. He won Design News' Special
Achievement award 1998, including Pittsburgh's 1994 Man of the Year for
Technology and Carnegie Mellon's Teare Award for Teaching Excellence.
Science Digest named him one of the top 100 U.S. innovators in 1985 for
his work in robotics. He has served on several select review panels,
including the National Academy of Sciences Peer Review Committee on DOE
Environmental Management Technologies; the National Research Council
Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, Aeronautics and Space
Engineering Board; and the National Academy of Sciences Committee to
Provide Interim Oversight of the DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex. He is a
member of the Center for the Commercial Development of Space, the Space
Studies Institute, the American Nuclear Society Robotics and Remote
Systems Division and is a Fellow of the American Association for
Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Whittaker is the author of numerous papers
and articles.
Director of the Field Robotics Center, Carnegie
Mellon University
Robots at Work
Dr. William L "Red" Whittaker is the Fredkin Research Professor of
Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the Field
Robotics Center which he founded in 1986. He received his B.S. from
Princeton in 1973, and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie
Mellon in 1975 and 1979, respectively. Dr. Whittaker's research centers
on mobile robots in field environments such as work sites and natural
terrain; computer architectures to control mobile robots; modeling and
planning for non-repetitive tasks; complex problems of objective sensing
in random or dynamic environments; and integration of complete field
robot systems.