Fast & Furious: Toyota, Japanese cars and the word ‘skid’. For many, it is surely impossible not to think of Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift, which showed us precisely the place where the Tuning culture evolved and modernized, as well as being the cradle of drifting. And this is what the thing is about, Toyota cars and skidding, because the iconic Japanese vehicle manufacturer has created a Tokyo Drift without humans: cars that skid on their own.
Autonomous Drifting
The Toyota Research Institute has released a video showing a modified Toyota Supra autonomously skidding around obstacles on a closed track, which it says is a world first. If the video has no trick or cardboard, it is impressive to see the car itself skidding, since the driver keeps his hands off the wheel throughout the maneuver.
The goal of aerobatics, according to Toyota, is not to create cars that can win drifting competitions, but rather to make autonomous driving systems that can react in situations where human drivers cannot.
Tesla, get over it
“With this project, we are expanding the area in which a car is controllable, with the aim of equipping ordinary drivers with the instinctive reflexes of a professional racing driver so that they can deal with the most challenging emergencies and keep the safer people on the road,” Avinash Balachandran, director of TRI’s Human-Centered Driving Research, said in a statement.
On the Toyota website you have more information and all the technical characteristics of the vehicle and the autonomous system it uses for this hands-free drifting.