Principal Investigator

John Dolan

Status

Active

Start Date

July 1, 2025

End Date

June 30, 2026

Project Type

Student Project Course/Capstone

Grant Program

US DOT BIL, Safety21, 2023 - 2028 (4811)

Grant Cycle

Safety21 : 25-26

Visibility

Public

Abstract

This proposal is for equipment and activity support for the F1Tenth Autonomous Racing Course that will be offered in Spring 2026 at Carnegie Mellon University. The course, which was developed by fellow Safety21 UTC member Prof. Rahul Mangharam and team at the University of Pennsylvania, was offered at CMU for the first and second times in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 by the PI and will be offered again in Spring 2025 and in subsequent spring semesters. It gives students a strong foundation in the full autonomous driving software stack and stresses safe maneuvering at high speeds among multiple surrounding vehicles. Participants in and graduates from the course at Penn and other universities have competed in F1Tenth race competitions at major robotics and transportation conferences including ICRA, IROS, and the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium and gone on to jobs in the intelligent transportation industry. The course therefore has high impact in the area of intelligent transportation workforce development. Furthermore, the technologies and techniques learned for maneuvering safely at high speeds have application to safety at the typically lower speeds of highway and city driving, and to the quick reactions needed to respond safely to emergency situations in conventional driving.

Past Safety21 support has allowed me to purchase and autonomy-retrofit 7 race cars. Past enrollments have involved six teams of 3 or 4 students each. The course is growing in popularity, so I would like to continue to build up the size of the fleet and have funds for parts replacement, since the cars take a beating during testing and racing. The rough cost per platform is $4K. I would like to buy more platforms and have also included in the budget money for spare parts and for support of student competition/race travel and related activities. Examples of the latter are the demos of F1Tenth autonomous racing given at the annual UTC Symposia at Mill 19 in November 2023 & 2024. My class also participated in a multi-university race that Prof. Mangharam's team sponsored at Penn in April 2024, and the budget includes support for that. Such activities spawn excitement among students and increase their interest in possible intelligent transportation careers.

Outside of the F1Tenth course, the autonomous platforms have also been used by students in my lab and other labs (including Prof. Yorie Nakahira's) to perform intelligent transportation research.

Finally, Prof. Mangharam and I have plans to use our experiences in teaching the course at Penn and CMU to write one or more articles encouraging other educators and institutions to use and adapt the course to further these same goals.

This is not a research project, so nothing is entered under TRID below. No deployment partner is listed because it is a capstone course equipment request.    

Description

Timeline

Strategic Description / RD&T

Section left blank until USDOT’s new priorities and RD&T strategic goals are available in Spring 2026.

Deployment Plan

Sept. 30, 2025: Preparation of order for new platforms and associated equipment in anticipation of the fourth offering of the F1Tenth course at CMU in S26.
Dec. 31, 2025: Receipt, assembly, and testing of the new platforms in time for the fourth offering of the F1Tenth course at CMU in S26.
Mar. 31, 2026: S26 course midterm: The RC car + autonomy equipment will have been used by up to ten teams to compete in multiple races during the course of the semester. Interested teams will continue to test in preparation for upcoming F1Tenth competition(s).
June 30, 2026: Interested teams will have competed at a multi-university competition at Penn in April, ICRA in May 2026, and/or other conference-associated F1Tenth competitions.

Expected Outcomes/Impacts

* Training of up to 44 students each year in autonomous racing techniques that are applicable to autonomous driving safety.
* Addition of these students to the intelligent transportation workforce or graduate student population.

Expected Outputs

* Development of safe collision-avoidance techniques applicable to emergency highway and urban situations in conventional driving. 
* Improved vehicle dynamics modeling (especially tire modeling and online system identification) applicable to safe autonomous driving maneuvers.

TRID

Individuals Involved

Email	Name	Affiliation	Role	Position
jdolan@andrew.cmu.edu	Dolan, John	Carnegie Mellon University	PI	Faculty - Research/Systems

Budget

Amount of UTC Funds Awarded

$27414.00

Total Project Budget (from all funding sources)

$54828.00

Documents

Type	Name	Uploaded
Data Management Plan	DMP_CMU_F1Tenth_Autonomous_Racing_Capstone_Course_Support.pdf	Nov. 22, 2024, 8:43 a.m.

Match Sources

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Partners

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