Toyota's development department, the Toyota Research Institute, has, with the help of Stanford University in the USA, carried out the world's first tandem operation with self-driving cars.
For the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and the engineers at Stanford University in the USA, drifting has been a central focus area for several years. This work has been part of the development of new and improved safety technologies for cars.
By including a second drifting car in the tests, creating a tandem drift, the teams have been able to simulate more dynamic conditions. It lets them examine how the cars react quickly to other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.
This is what Toyota writes in a press release .
– Our employees came together with one goal in mind – how to make driving even safer, says TRI's Vice President of Human Interactive Driving, Avinash Balachandra.
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To achieve this, the researchers have used artificial intelligence to make two cars drift side by side without the drivers' intervention.
– Tandem drifting is the most complex maneuver in motorsport, and when we can do it completely automatically without help or input from the drivers, we can also control ordinary cars in extreme situations.
– It has a far-reaching influence on how we integrate safety systems in the cars of the future, says Balachandra.
– The physics of operation actually correspond to what a car can experience on snow or ice.
– What we have learned from the drifting project with self-driving cars has already led to new techniques for controlling self-driving cars safely on ice, says Professor Chris Gerdes, director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford.
In a tandem driving sequence with self-coring cars, the two cars navigate close to each other, sometimes only a few centimeters apart, while coasting all the way to the cars' limit.
Modern techniques, including a neural network deck model, were used to build the choir tool's AI, enabling the neural network to learn from experience, like a professional choir.
– Track conditions can change dramatically in the space of a few minutes when the sun goes down. The artificial intelligencem we developed for this project learns from each choir trip to the track to be able to handle that change, says Gerdes.
Globally, around 1.35 million people lose their lives in road accidents every year. Many of these accidents happen when the driver loses control of the car in a sudden situation. Self-correcting technologies can help drivers react correctly in stressful situations.
– When your car starts to skid or slide, it is only your own driving skills that must prevent you from colliding with another driving vehicle, tree or obstacle.
– Very few drivers are able to handle it optimally, and a split second can be the difference between life and death. The new technology can step in in time and help steer the car, just as a drifting expert would, says Chris Gerdes.
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