Red Whittaker is a roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He led Tartan Racing to its first place victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007) Urban Challenge and brought Carnegie Mellon University the two million dollar prize. Previously, Whittaker also competed for the DARPA Grand Challenge placing second and third place simultaneously, in the Grand Challenge Races.

Whittaker is currently the Fredkin Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute as well as the Director of the Field Robotics Center and Chief Scientist of the Robotics Engineering Consortium, both located at the university.He won IEEE Simon Ramo Medal in 2012.