William L. "Red" Whittaker (born 1948) is an American roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Today, Whittaker continues this work through NASA contracts in the form of MoonRanger, a planetary rover in development designed to quickly and autonomously explore the surface of the Moon.

[13] The accident at the Quecreek Coal Mine in nearby Somerset County, Pennsylvania compelled Whittaker and his colleague Scott Thayer to develop robots that could map collapsed or abandoned mines[14] for accident prevention or rescue purposes; they were joined in this endeavor by CMU colleague Sebastian Thrun.

Whittaker has led teams at Carnegie Mellon to build self-driving cars that have participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge since the contest's inception.

In the third competition held in 2007, Whittaker's team "Tartan Racing" captured first place with their vehicle "Boss", winning the $2 million prize.