Of all the forms of motorsport, drifting is arguably the one that puts raw driver skill above ahead of everything else. That’s even more true of tandem drifting, when another car in close proximity adds an extra layer of jeopardy. So removing the drivers from the equation would be pointless, right? Regardless, Toyota has set out to prove it can be done.
Toyota’s research and development wing, the Toyota Research Institute, has teamed up with California’s Stanford University to outfit a pair of GR Supras with all the necessary tech to allow them to not just be driven, but drifted autonomously.
The Supras had their powertrains, suspension and safety gear upgraded to Formula Drift specifications by Toyota Racing Development and tuning company GReddy, while a plethora of computers and sensors were installed to control the throttle, brakes and steering.
Most importantly for the tandem drift, the two cars are hooked up to a dedicated and shared WiFi network that allows them to communicate with one another. This allows them to communicate via a technique known as ‘Nonlinear Model Predictive Control’, whereby “Each vehicle then solves and re-solves an optimisation problem up to 50 times per second to decide what steering, throttle, and brake commands best meet its objectives while responding to rapidly changing conditions.”
Overhead view of the autonomous drift sequence
If you’ve – ahem – drifted off by now, then so have we, but the result is something that’s far easier to understand: two cars doing big, smokey skids in close proximity, without any driver input.
We’re not sure the sport of driverless drifting will catch on – after all, watching a cold, calculating computer do this simply isn’t as impressive as knowing there’s an imperfect, fallible lump of flesh and bone making it happen.
Two autonomous Toyota GR Supras drifting
There is a point, though. Apparently. Toyota and Stanford say that teaching autonomous cars to drift can inform how they’ll respond to icy or snowy conditions, while doing it in tandem can help improve safety systems that react to other vehicles and pedestrians. That ought to shut up those people who still think drifting is a pointless motorsport.
