"Red" Whittaker: A Man And His Robots
 

Heres an interesting story from business week magazine

"Red" Whittaker: A Man And His Robots

and heres the slide show

Slide show

this is really cool, at least to me...i wonder if he knows about FIRST.

Re: "Red" Whittaker: A Man And His Robots
 

Yes, he does. Red and some of the students from the Field Robotics Center supported one of the early FIRST teams (in '94 or '95, if I recall correctly). Then later, several of his students supported Team 117 in '97-'99. Two of the students from Red's lab that worked with Team 117 were Mike Montemerlo and Mark Maimone. Mike went on to become the lead software engineer for the Stanford University DARPA Grand Challenge team, which won the $2 million prize with their robot "Stanley." Mark is now one of the lead systems engineers for the Mars Exploration Program office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, and is currently working on designs for the Mars Science Lab project. In the mean time, Red and his lab continue to knock out some of the coolest robots in the world on a regular basis. The CMU Robotics Institute is the robotics community's equivalent of Mecca.

-dave