DARPA Grand Challenge
Further information: DARPA Grand ChallengeWhittaker has led teams at Carnegie Mellon to build self-driving cars that have participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge since the inception of the contest. In the first competition held in 2004, his Red Team's vehicle "Sandstorm" traveled 7.4 miles, the farthest of any participant, but no prize was awarded to any team. In the second competition in 2005, Whittaker led two teams, whose vehicles "Sandstorm" and "H1ghlander" captured 2nd place and 3rd place, respectively, behind the vehicle of his colleague, former Carnegie Mellon professor Sebastian Thrun. (Thrun's software development leader, Michael Montemerlo, was also a former student of Whittaker.)
In the third competition held in 2007, Whittaker's team "Tartan Racing" captured first place with their vehicle "Boss", winning the $2 million prize.
Read more about this topic: Red Whittaker
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or challenge:
“One of my playmates, who was apprenticed to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked his master one afternoon if he might go a-fishing, and his master consented. He was gone three months. When he came back, he said that he had been to the Grand Banks, and went to setting type again as if only an afternoon had intervened.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,
The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head,
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)