As if you hadn’t heard enough about Back to the Future this week, the geniuses at Stanford University have built a drifting Delorean. The kicker, however, is that the car can drift by itself.
The car was built by Stanford’s Revs Center, an automotive research institution. The car is, naturally, called MARTY, an abbreviation for Multiple Actuator Research Testbed for Yaw control. It doesn’t just look sweet, however. Getting the car to slide around serves a practical purpose, and that is to get autonomous vehicles to perform at the limits in emergency situations.
According to Wired, The project began in May 2013. While any car could have served as the base, a Delorean was chosen because “It’s a car that says science project,” according to Revs head Chris Gerdes. Unfortunately the team soon discovered that the Delorean isn’t the sharpest handling car out there. It understeered “horrendously,” which made it hard to hold a sustained drift. Perhaps an autonomous Toyota AE86 or Nissan 240SX would have fared better.
Undeterred, engineers retrofitted the Delorean with a new power steering and steer-by-wire system, coil springs, and electric motors at each rear wheel. Inertial sensors and GPS were added to help with the drifting part. The result is a car that looks pretty ready to tackle the next Formula D battle.
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