Cal State Fullerton electrical engineering graduate students Mayank Mehta and Chinkal Panchal nabbed first place, and three undergraduate teams placed second, fourth and ninth in the May 23 Natcar races at UC Davis. Second-place undergrad finisher Cheng Yao (Tesla) Qian had a time of 41.85 seconds, a difference of just 0.62 seconds from the first-place UCLA team. Titans faced off against 45 collegiate teams overall.
The student engineers also were top-finishers at the recent Natcar CSUF competition at Fullerton College. With the fastest time of 22.01 seconds, Benjamin Gonzalez and Christopher Suh won first place in the May event. Classmates Victor Pires and Maira Prata received the second-place prize with a time of 24.64 seconds. Teams from Fullerton College and UCLA also competed.
Earlier in the spring, Qian, Suh and Gonzalez took home the top prizes in the Grand PrIEEE undergraduate robot design competition April 22 at UC San Diego.
Qian recorded the fastest time — 16.70 seconds — snagging a first-place win in the contest in which student-designed, constructed and programmed robotic cars race a course outlined in tape. Suh and Gonzalez finished second with a time of 18.34 seconds. Also competing were teams from UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara.
Coaching the Titans was alumnus Michael J. Yeh ’13 (M.S. electrical engineering), an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Corona. Yeh and fellow alumnus Ye Lu ’15 (M.S. in electrical engineering) began holding workshops last August to prepare students for competition.
Mohinder S. Grewal and Jidong Huang of the Electrical Engineering Department are the team’s faculty advisers.