Have you watched the ‘Transformer’ series where cars can talk, fly, change shapes and save human life? Well, may be the future is still far ahead, but Toyota has made some serious advancements on saving human life. With their new prototype self-drifting ‘Supra’ car project they have proved that autonomous car can provide extra level of safety by AI learning and selective programming.
Self Drifting Car Project Could Save Lives
Toyota’s Research Institute (TRI) and Stanford University’s Dynamic Design Laboratory teamed up for quite a while for achieving Toyota’s high ambition of zero traffic fatality. They hope that including skills like drifting in the vehicle could possibly prevent fatal crashes for the next-gen traffic safety systems.
However, the goal of the project is not making a self-driving vehicle to get rid of human driver. The idea is to help the driver by making calculative decision like drifting in a critical situation.
What is Drifting?
Drifting is however a very complex technique. To drift one needs to use the acceleration and oversteering of a rear-wheel in such a way that it impacts the back wheels to lose traction. It will make the back of the car sliding sideways hence, drift.
Concept of Self Drifting Car Project:
This project is basically gathering intel on drifting from various professional racers through their basic instincts with the collaboration of automated driving technology. And then come up with a new design which can enable the active safety technology.
One of the top researchers from Stanford quoted “since 2008, our lab has taken inspiration from human race car drivers in designing algorithms that enable automated vehicles to handle the most challenging emergencies”. It sheds a light on why Toyota thinks that a self-drifting car can solve not only their but also overall traffic fatality scenarios.
Goals of Toyota’s Self Drifting New Project:
This project is intended to assist the automaker to introduce trailblazing programs which will boost up average driving experience and achieving road safety. Toyota’s Research Institute (TRI) is working towards achieving the Three Parts Initiative of Toyota which is, “involving people, vehicles and the traffic environment with harnessing Real-world Safety through acquiring knowledge from data of the original crash incident and implement these accomplishments into car development.
Expert’s Follow-up:
“Gill prat, CEO of the Toyota’s Research Institute” mentions that lethal crashes take place under acute situations every now then and the drivers would require superhuman skills to avoid collision. He added on “the reality is that every driver has vulnerabilities, and to avoid a crash, drivers often need to make maneuvers that are beyond their abilities.
Through this project, TRI will learn from some of the most skilled drivers in the world to develop sophisticated control algorithms that amplify human driving abilities and keep people safe.”
Self Drifting Automobile will Change the Game:
A complex car control system is not added in most vehicles due to the instant decision-making procedure is computationally hard. Within a split of a moment, the car must calculate a number of variables, take the right actions to make a drift and maintain the slide till the car recover its equilibrium.
On the other hand, the human drifting process is naturally processed through experiences. Now is it possible to clone this system in the programming learning process?
The expertise of Stanford university’s research team plays a key role here. The Dynamic design Laboratory keens on producing a program algorithm that initiates feedback loop. This loop calculates car position and the driver’s plan and then functioning between these two critical scenarios, it measures the road ahead in the same time emphasizing the sliding angle of tires.
Instinct of this Algorithm:
This system does not behave like open or closed loop routines which differ on car conditions. This program algorithm uses snapshot of the car instant situation then starts multiple responses and selects the best outcome by manipulating the car to conduct the selected behavior.
Future of the Project:
For Toyota, this is more than just an achievement as they are trying to give a sensible aspiration to the vehicle which is ‘Mind over Matter’. The foundation of self-drifting car has been laid upon since a while and though Toyota is not only manufacturer here but they are the one to claim this triumphant of teaching vehicles to drift which in fact, have a functional and feasible impact on the problem of minimizing the fatal accidents and saves human life.
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