Engineers taught electric cars to drift on autopilot [VIDEO]

With the development of artificial intelligence, automatic driving systems for cars are gaining more and more capabilities. Dynamic Design Lab engineers have created an electric car that can not only avoid obstacles, but also drift no worse than some drivers. The developers clearly demonstrated the capabilities of the new generation autopilot in a video format using the example of the DeLorean DMC-12 sports car, which is familiar to all fans of the film “Back to the Future”.

The car, called MARTY (named after the protagonist of the film) received two electric motors with a total torque of 7000 N · m and an autonomous control system with pre-programmed GPS coordinates. On the first attempt, the car managed to overcome all the obstacles at the test site without hooking a single cone or fence. After that, the electric car was set a more difficult task – to enter a controlled drift in unmanned mode.

There are several high-precision GPS antennas in the vehicle’s design that track its location to the nearest centimeter. Steering, braking, gear shifting and skidding are carried out using the on-board computer. The authors of the project are sure that drifting can be not only extreme entertainment, but also the key to safe driving. Researchers are striving to develop such a control system that could independently avoid an accident in a critical situation by sending the car into a skid.

The estimated start date for the commercial supply of the “drifting” autopilot is unknown.