Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019 - 8

S

elf-driving vehicles start with
Red Whittaker.
The Carnegie Mellon University
robotics professor was a fixture at the DARPA challenges held more
than a decade ago, which helped spark
the modern-day push to build autonomous-driving systems.
In 2007, he outfitted a Chevy Tahoe
known as Boss with sensors, software and
computing power in an architecture that
has been a blueprint for dozens of companies building such systems today. Boss
won the Urban Challenge that year, bringing Carnegie Mellon a $2 million prize.
For Whittaker, it's one of many highlights in a remarkable robotics career.
He joined Deputy Mobility Editor Pete
Bigelow and Editor Leslie J. Allen on the
Shift podcast to reflect on the DARPA
challenges, the progress of self-driving
technology and his latest moonshot.
Here are edited excerpts.

QA

WITH RED
WHITTAKER

Q: WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THE
TAHOE? BECAUSE IT WAS THE
BEST VEHICLE FOR THE DESERT?
A: (Laughs.) It was chosen because

shift * july 2019

Q: DECADES BEFORE, YOU MADE
ROBOTS THAT HELPED CLEAN UP
THREE MILE ISLAND AFTER THE
PARTIAL NUCLEAR MELTDOWN.
HOW DID THAT SET THE STAGE
FOR AVS?
A: The Three Mile Island accident

Q: YOU NOW BUILD ROBOTS FOR
SPACE EXPLORATION. WHAT'S
THE LATEST ON THAT?
A: Well, having those primeval self-

racer. It had all the sensing you'd come
to expect from such a car today, and
server-class computing of the time. It
had tremendous capability for a plan A
and plan B, which you needed because
racing is so unpredictable. It had so
much more than what was needed to
bring in the win.

8

day were written to not exceed speed
limits. But they didn't say anything
about acceleration or jack-rabbit starts or
screeching stops at the stop sign.

presented a circumstance that could
just not be addressed by people, and
particularly in the basement, which has
long since been cleaned up. That was all
robotic, and no person was in there during
the operation or since. The experience of
that was galvanizing. It created the first
of the great robotics teams, and in that
same year, we created the first selfdriving machine.

Q: WHY DID BOSS FARE SO WELL?
A: The Boss was a ... superb autonomous

General Motors paid the bill. The
challenges had nothing to do with
high speed. If all were known, on the
morning of the Urban Challenge, DARPA
approached me with a clear request to
tone it down, cut it back, no sense to
overdo it.

Q: WERE THEY SAYING THAT YOU
WERE TOO GOOD?
A: Too fast, that's all. The rules of the

Carnegie Mellon prof
explains what the
Three Mile Island
accident did for AVs

driving capabilities really pushed the
question of "What do you do with it?"
The technology has been an enabler for
robots on land, sea, air, underwater and
underground. The next one for me is the
high frontier. There's bits and pieces of
my technology up there now, but it's not
quite the same as the ambition for a full
mission. The short of it is my next one is
sending a robot to the moon in 2021.

Q: WHEN THE HISTORY OF
ROBOTICS IS WRITTEN, WHAT
WOULD YOU LIKE THE RED
WHITTAKER LINE TO SAY?
A: They can blame it all on me. ■
Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019

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