The Japanese automaker puts an extra fun spin on autonomous driving by heading out to the race track—at speed.
- Toyota’s Research Institute made a Toyota Supra drift without input from the driver on a two-mile stretch of Thunderhill Raceway in Summertown, Tennessee.
- Exercises like these aren’t just for fun; they help push driver safety aides to work better in all conditions.
- Don’t expect to see this kind of feature showing up in a production car anytime soon—if ever.
Driver safety is paramount. From the ingenious days of padded dashboards and three-point seat belts, to the development of crumple zones, passenger safety is constantly improving. And for the last couple decades, automakers have increasingly leaned on quickly advancing technologies that help the car keep you from instigating an accident by warning you, or even taking the weight off your shoulders and operating independently. Of course, fully autonomous cars are still years away, but semi-autonomous driver aides are currently helping drivers in traffic right now. Yet while some of these driver safety features are groundbreaking, they’re also, well, kind of boring—at least, they were.
Toyota’s Research Institute used some autonomous safety tech and a little computer wizardry to make a wide-body Supra drift autonomously. We’re probably not going to see this capability rolled into the road-going Supra anytime soon, but using autonomous technology to perform high-performance driving techniques is hilariously fun to watch.
As much as this experiment seems like a fun excuse for engineers to goof off at a race track, playing with an autonomously drifting Toyota Supra has some real applications in pushing driver assistance forward, as the engineers in the video explain. Controlling a drift is akin to controlling a car’s inputs whenever you’re in a limited-traction situation, which requires precise input controls to avoid a collision.
Limited to just a two-mile stretch of Thunder Hill Raceway in Summertown, Tennessee, this autonomously drifting Supra probably won’t be hitting your local track anytime soon. And even when fully autonomous tech starts showing up in production cars, don’t hold your breath for anything that will automatically drift your car like this. That kind of move is all on you.
Keyword: Toyota Makes a Supra Drift All By Itself