Californian post-secondary institution Stanford University has taught a DeLorean car to drift properly while driving autonomously.
The project started in 2015 when the university’s Dynamic Design Lab picked up an old DeLorean and made it automated. At the time, the car could essentially only do doughnuts.
In the four years since, however, the team has been able to get the car to drift through multi-turn kilometre-long tracks in mere minutes. Moreover, the car can do so with near human-level precision.
Beyond just reviving a classic car, the researchers’ main goal was to show how teaching the car improved handling could, in turn, increase safety during hazardous conditions.
It’s currently unclear when these learnings might be applied to real vehicles. For now, though, the researchers say they’re happy with the results.
Check out their full findings here.
