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The Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Paradigm
straight into the boulder! In this case, the behavior arbiter (a precursor of DAMN) 121
had apparently viewed the choices between avoiding to the right and left as equal
and thereby cancelling each other out.
About “Red” Whitaker.
William Whitaker used to have red hair, hence the nickname. Whitaker has had an
impressive career focusing on building the hardware for industrial applications of
mobile robots, including the robots used to clean up Chernobyl (through the com-
pany RedZone Robotics) and Three-Mile Island. Typically, the robots are teleoperated
or contain software developed by other CMU scientists such as Reid Simmons and
Tony Stentz.
Dante and the media.
The Dante project received heavy media coverage, and percolated into the entertain-
ment industry. A small, Dante-like robot appears in the movie, Dante’s Peak,as part
of the team of vulcanologists led by Pierce Brosnan. The robot is continually breaking
in the movie, which is unfortunately an all-too-accurate reflection of the current state
of robotics. In the “Firewalker” episode of the TV series The X-Files, a robot looking
like an Odetics “spider” robot is down in a volcano and broadcasts disturbing images
implying that the vulcanologists have been attacked by a mysterious life form. The
culprit turned out to be a scientist who had quit taking his medication.
EVAHR.
The EVAHR project was cancelled in the mid 1990’s. It was envisioned as a jet-pack
with arms to help astronauts construct the space station. The heuristic is that less
than 20% of the research conducted by NASA will actually be integrated into a flight
package.