SAN FRANCISCO: Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has reached a new research milestone in autonomy, providing a glimpse into the future of safer mobility for all.

TRI researchers successfully programmed a modified Supra to autonomously drift around obstacles on a closed track — a world first.

Combining a deep knowledge of both vehicle dynamics and control design, TRI’s Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) approach extends the vehicle’s operational domain to the very limits of its performance.

The idea behind this research is to use controlled, autonomous drifting to avoid accidents by navigating sudden obstacles or hazardous road conditions like black ice.

“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.”

Every year, car crashes result in nearly 40,000 fatalities in the United States and about 1.35 million fatalities worldwide.

While most crashes occur in mundane situations, in some extreme situations, drivers may need to make maneuvers that take their vehicle close to and, at times, beyond normal limits of handling.

“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.”



This achievement brings TRI researchers closer to understanding the full spectrum of vehicle performance. The software advances announced on Wednesday calculate a whole new trajectory every 20th of a second to balance the car gracefully as it goes around the track.

Looking ahead, Toyota will continue to push the limits of vehicle safety technology by researching ever more effective ways for emerging safety technologies to amplify human capabilities on the road.

The experiments were conducted at Thunderhill Raceway near here.

The Supra has been specially customised for autonomous driving research.



It is equipped with computer-controlled steering, throttle, clutch displacement, sequential transmission and individual wheel braking.

Vehicle state information is obtained from a dual-antenna RTK-GNSS-aided INS system at a rate of 250Hz, and the NMPC controller runs on an x86 computer.

For the purposes of data collection with expert drivers in a controlled environment, the suspension, engine, transmission, chassis and safety systems (e.g., roll cage, fire suppression) have been modified to be similar to that used in Formula Drift.

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