(Image source: Toyota)
Engineers at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and Stanford University's Dynamic Design Lab have built a Toyota Supra that can drift itself.
While this sounds frivolous, TRI says the car was designed to "develop sophisticated control algorithms that amplify human driving abilities and keep people safe”.
Although most crashes happen in "mundane situations", there are times when drivers have to take sudden evasive actions that take the cars to the limit of their handling capabilities.
It is in these types of situations that TRI expects it's self-drifting algorithms to be most useful. And TRI hopes its systems will be able to help drivers regain control of their cars in extreme situations.
Unfortunately, TRI did not disclose the exact system that's at work in their self-drifting cars and only stated that it uses the "calculated foresight of a supercomputer".
If the system proves to be useful, Toyota will implement it in its cars as part of its driver-assistance systems.
Source: Toyota Research Institute via Top Gear
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