Penn Students Take RoboRacer Course From Classroom to Race Track
Two Penn Engineering students who enrolled in the RoboRacer course in Spring 2026 went on to compete in the 27th RoboRacer Autonomous Racing Competition at the 2026 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation in June. Their story marks a decade since the course joined the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering curriculum.
- Rahul Mangharam added the RoboRacer course, originally called F1TENTH, to Penn's curriculum in 2016.
- The course focuses on control, perception and planning algorithms for cars at one tenth of actual scale.
- Dhyey Shah and Cedric Hollande enrolled in Spring 2026 and decided within a month to compete.
- They entered the 27th RoboRacer Autonomous Racing Competition at the 2026 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation in June.
A course that grew beyond the classroom
Rahul Mangharam added the course to the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering curriculum in 2016, according to Penn Engineering. Originally called F1TENTH, it centers on building the best control, perception and planning algorithms for cars at one tenth of their actual scale.
Over the past ten years the course has drawn attention from potential graduate students interested in the class, as well as from a global network of engineers working in autonomous systems. It has also spread outside the classroom into autonomous racing competitions held at various conferences over the years.
Two students aim for the next level
Dhyey Shah, a recent robotics graduate, and Cedric Hollande, a MEAM master's student, enrolled in the course in Spring 2026. After just a month of instruction, they decided they wanted to take the experience further and compete in the 27th RoboRacer Autonomous Racing Competition at the 2026 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation in June.
Shah said the class was an early draw to the program. “RoboRacer/F1TENTH was the first class I heard of at Penn, which really got me excited about the program, and both Cedric and I follow the actual F1 as well,” he said, according to Penn Today. He added that he was interested in the competition side of the course, and that the pair worked on the logistics for competing from the first month of the class.
What it means for students
The story shows how the course now links coursework to real competition. Students who learn control, perception and planning on small-scale vehicles can test those skills against teams at an international robotics conference. The source does not give results from the competition, and the full account is published by Penn Today.
The article is tagged with the GRASP Lab and robotics, and with Mangharam's name.
Penn Engineering: From the RoboRacer Course to the RoboRacer Track
