William 'Red' Whittaker: A Man and His Machines

From an interesting profile of William “Red” Whittaker, now the Fredkin Professor of Robotics at The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University:

"Ideas for robotic creations come to Whittaker from various sources. The motivation for Groundhog, a robot that maps abandoned mines, came after the 2002 Pennsylvania coal mining accident that trapped nine workers underground for 77 hours. Whittaker wanted to develop a tool that would help remove human risk from the industry. In another effort to remove humans from risk, he has worked on developing robots that can explore the radioactive remains of nuclear power plants.

Other ideas come from observing animals in nature, as can be seen in his rugged terrain exploring creation, Ambler. Ambler’s eight-legged design was born from the animal world, but has been modified to use an energy-efficient overlapping gait that is more efficient than anything in the animal world.

'Motivations are in the events of our time – a Chernobyl or a mine entrapment. You can almost read the daily headlines and see the motivations,' said Whittaker of the sources for his ideas. 'Another great one is exploration, and the idea that there is still so much to be discovered in this world and worlds beyond.'”