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Last
night, a group of Stanford researchers unveiled the university’s latest
self-driving vehicle, only at first glance this one looked more retro
than the autonomous car of the future.
The
new prototype is a DeLorean DMC-12 with a power steering motor that can
drift with, well, let’s call it “robotic precision.” (Strangely, this
isn’t the first self-drifting car,
but it’s definitely the first self-drifting DeLorean.) And, in keeping
with the tradition of giving their autonomous vehicle projects human
names, the Stanford Revs team
named the car Marty, which technically stands for “Multiple Actuator
Research Test bed for Yaw control.” In reality, it’s an obvious nod to
Marty McFly from Back to the Future.
While
some of Stanford’s previous autonomous prototypes have been testbeds
for avoiding objects on everyday roads or determining the time it takes
for a human to take over control of a car, Marty the DeLorean is built
to drift like a professional race car driver — even better than a race
car driver — in an attempt to show how autonomous vehicles could handle
control and stabilization in hairy, real-life situations. Unlike other
autonomous vehicles that have a spinning LIDAR dome on top to detect the
objects around them, the DeLorean is using a combination of finely
tuned mechanical engineering and automated driving software to control
movement.
“Drifting,
for us, was part of our larger goal on vehicle safety,” Chris Gerdes,
director of the Stanford Revs program, said in a panel discussion
moderated by MythBusters star Jamie Hyneman. "All cars are
subject to the laws of physics. But we think automated vehicles should
be able to do anything within those constraints.“
The
DeLorean is built with two separate motors on the rear wheels, meaning
the amount of torque delivered to each wheel can be controlled more
precisely. Each motor is capable of about 200 kilowatts of power, though
the DeLorean is running at about a third of that right now.
It’s
not the first time the team had done drifting work, Gerdes said. But
the last time, back in 2008, the team ran into problems with the motors
of the car they were working on. "We weren’t able to control them fast
enough or communicate with them,” he said.
That’s where Renovo Motors,
the Silicon Valley-based maker of an electric supercar in the body of a
Shelby Daytona Coupe, came in this time around. Renovo provided the
drivetrain and transmission for the DeLorean, so that the Stanford team
could focus on things like the power steering and the automated driving
software.
So,
why a DeLorean, something that you probably never associated with power
steering and control? Jon Goh, a PhD candidate at Stanford and one of
the project leads, said there were a few reasons why they chose Doc
Brown’s ride. For one, Stanford has a history of working with major
automakers — and in this case, it didn’t want to step on any toes by
choosing one over another.
“Drifting was a part of our larger goal on vehicle safety.”
It was also easy to work on, and relatively cheap, Goh said. Wired reports that the team spent just $22,000 to buy the DeLorean
from someone using it as his daily driver in Sausalito, California. And
finally, the team was looking for a rear mid-engine, rear-wheel drive
layout, and the DeLorean fit the bill.
With
Back to the Future Day finally upon us, “everyone says, ‘Where’s my
hoverboard?’” Goh said. “Well, you don’t have a hoverboard, but you have
an electric autonomous DeLorean, so that’s pretty cool.”
Just
don’t try to take it through the drive-thru, Shannon McClintock says.
On the master’s student’s first day on the Revs team, she realized
during a trip to a fast food joint that the car’s ground clearance was
so low that she couldn’t reach the drive-thru window. And she just as
quickly discovered she couldn’t open the car’s gull-wing doors there,
either.
“Rookie move,” she says.
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