Watch: Toyota Testing Autonomous GR Supra That Can Drift

Driving enthusiasts want no part of tomorrow’s autonomous cars, but some of their technology could help make driving safer for a lot of people, especially when losing control of the vehicle.

That’s what the team at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) in California is thinking after successfully programming a GR Supra to autonomously drift around obstacles on a closed track—a world first.

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“At TRI, our goal is to use advanced technologies that augment and amplify humans, not replace them,” said Avinash Balachandran, senior manager of TRI’s Human Centric Driving Research. “Through this project, we are expanding the region in which a car is controllable, with the goal of giving regular drivers the instinctual reflexes of a professional race car driver to be able to handle the most challenging emergencies and keep people safer on the road.”

Toyota has in fact partnered with drift legend Ken Gushi as well as the Dynamic Design Lab at Stanford University and automotive performance specialist GReddy to replicate Gushi’s ability to control the car to the limit and avoid obstacles.  

Combining a deep knowledge of both vehicle dynamics and control design, TRI’s Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) approach extends the car’s operational domain to the very limits of its performance. The idea behind this research is to utilize controlled, autonomous drifting to avoid accidents by navigating sudden obstacles or hazardous road conditions like black ice.

Modified in a way that is similar to vehicles used in Formula Drift, the autonomous GR Supra uses computer-controlled steering, throttle, clutch displacement, sequential transmission and individual wheel braking. The software calculates a whole new trajectory every 20th of a second to balance the car gracefully as it goes around the track.

“When faced with wet or slippery roads, professional drivers may choose to ‘drift’ the car through a turn, but most of us are not professional drivers,” said Jonathan Goh, TRI research scientist. “That’s why TRI is programming vehicles that can identify obstacles and autonomously drift around obstacles on a closed track.”

How does it all come together? We’ll leave you with this video showing TRI’s development work and testing: