Stanford teaches a self-driving DeLorean to drift

(credit: Stanford University)

We have to say, we like the approach that Stanford University's Chris Gerdes takes when it comes to self-driving cars. Several years ago, Prof. Gerdes and his students taught an Audi TTS called Shelley how to lap a race track. This week, he and his team at Stanford's Revs program unveiled their latest work, MARTY the DeLorean.

Although the name—and the choice of car and date of the announcement—all pay tribute to Back to the Future, MARTY is no time machine. Rather, the Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control would be more at home in a different film franchise: Fast and Furious.

MARTY, Stanford's self-drifting DeLorean.

MARTY was designed to go drifting. "The laws of physics will limit what the car can do, but we think the software should be capable of any possible maneuver within those limits. MARTY is another step in this direction thanks to the passion and hard work of our students. Stanford builds great research by building great researchers," Gerdes said.

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