The Stanford University engineers at Dynamic Design Lab have been perfecting the skill of Autonomous DeLorean Drifting for years. MARTY — a 1981 DeLorean that’s been converted into a drift car that’s both all-electric and autonomous — has been put through its paces since 2015. That’s the year the car reached its goal of successfully drifting through a series of doughnuts with a precision that defied human ability.
Fast forward to 2019 and the technology behind MARTY again demonstrated finesse and superhuman precision as it successfully navigated MARTYkhana, a racing-like format that combines high speeds with complicated driving conditions. MARTY was built with a number of customizations that allow the vehicle’s performance to be used for research. These include computer-controlled steering that can move through the car’s full range is under one second, 2 GPS antennae that can track the vehicle’s position within 1 inch and a custom suspension that’s designed to endure rapid-fire turns and intense drifts.