Toyota’s autonomous Supra drift car

When an American university teams up with Toyota’s Research Institute, the outcome is … well, smokin’!

IT’S one of those things every ‘driver’ will claim is dead-easy to do … until they try.

When it comes down to it, achieving a decent drift ain’t half as easy as it looks.

That is, when a human is at the wheel.

When a car is left to do its own thing, turns out big controlled skid action is an utter cinch.

WTF?

Okay, so the car in question isn’t exactly as it departed the production line.

Creating a Toyota Supra that can quite literally drift itself took quite a bit of after-market finetuning. But, wow, as the video shows: Totally worth it!

The prototype, built by engineers from the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and Stanford University’s ‘Dynamic Design Lab’, is supposed to help the carmaker “develop sophisticated control algorithms that amplify human driving abilities and keep people safe”.

The TRI points out that “while most crashes occur in mundane situations, in other situations drivers may need to make manoeuvres that take their vehicle close to and, at times, exceed normal limits of handling”.

A car that can catch a slide with little to no human intervention would help when drivers “need to make manoeuvres that are beyond their abilities” in order to avoid a collision. In this case, catching a slide brought about by, for example, a driver taking evasive action, their own over-exuberance or poor road conditions.

When it’s up and running, the system will be another tool in the automotive industry’s ever-expanding armoury of driver-assistance systems. Toyota says its active safety technologies will be shared broadly “so that Toyota and other auto manufacturers can deploy it on the road”.