Toyota Research Institute Built an Autonomous Supra… For DRIFTING!
In the interest of automotive safety, the Toyota Research Institute has built a Supra that can drift autonomously on a closed course.
Have you always wanted to be able to drift like drift legend Ken Gushi? Well, the folks at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have just made it a whole lot easier. In fact, you don’t need any driving skill at all. Today TRI has demonstrated a Toyota Supra that was programmed to autonomously drift around obstacles on a closed track. This is a world first. Tesla thinks Autopilot is a big deal, but Toyota just built a self-driving drift car for Pete’s sake. We guess it won’t be long now before we start seeing a row of beige Camrys drifting out of the supermarket parking lot on the way home. As amusing as that might be and as fun as drifting is, this project is all about improving a vehicle’s active safety.
“At TRI, our goal is to use advanced technologies that augment and amplify humans, not replace them,” said Avinash Balachandran, senior manager of TRI’s Human Centric Driving Research. “Through this project, we are expanding the region in which a car is controllable, with the goal of giving regular drivers the instinctual reflexes of a professional race car driver to be able to handle the most challenging emergencies and keep people safer on the road.” Most drivers do not spend years at racetracks around the world learning advanced driving techniques. But that doesn’t mean everyone should not have all of the safety benefits that an advanced driver does. That little old lady leaving church might not have the skills and reaction times of Gushi. But some day her car might. And that day is getting closer.
Project Detail
“One year ago, TRI and the Dynamic Design Lab at Stanford University set out to design a new level of active safety to help avoid crashes and prevent injuries and fatalities.” With what we saw today, a major milestone in that journey has been reached. TRI uses a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) approach to push the vehicle to the very limits of its performance. The Toyota Supra used in the demonstration has been modified with computer-controlled steering, throttle, clutch displacement, sequential transmission, and individual wheel braking. The software used to control all of this calculates a whole new trajectory every 20th of a second to balance the car as it drifts around the track. All in the name of safety of course.
Iron Man
A car like this would almost be like driving your very own Iron Man suit. You get into the car and suddenly you have near superhuman abilities. The car takes over for you. While that may seem unsettling at first, it can do things that most people simply can’t. You are an instant driving hero. You are safer than you have ever been behind the wheel. In the statement released today Toyota said they will continue “researching ever more effective ways for emerging safety technologies to amplify human capabilities on the road.” Amplify human capabilities, sounds like a superhero suit to us.
Beyond Safety
OK, this whole project is to make us all safer. And with nearly 40,000 fatalities on U.S. roads every year, we can use all the help we can get. But let’s take a step back from the safety aspect for just a moment. How cool is this? Will we eventually be able to sign up for a track day and have the car fling us around the course as if we were expert racing drivers? And we would never crash. How much fun would that be? Will we eventually see a racing series where all autonomous cars are competing against each other? This all remains to be seen, but the Toyota Research Institute is bringing some exciting technology that can make it all possible.
See the Future
Checkout the video below to watch this amazing feat of engineering for yourself. The Toyota Supra effortlessly drifts around Thunderhill Raceway without any driver input at all. If it can do something like that, it can surely avoid some potential accidents out on the road. Normally on February 2 the most exciting thing to watch is a groundhog in Pennsylvania trying to predict the weather. Do yourself a favor and watch this instead. This is a more accurate prediction of the future, and a lot more exciting.
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