By teaching a DeLorean how to drift, they hope to improve how self-driving cars handle hazardous conditions.
Stanford researchers are building a self-driving drifting DeLorean to improve how automous cars handle hazardous situations
Tweet
Read more about it on Stanford’s Blog
“It’s for reasearch! 😉 ;-)”
On a more serious note, I wonder whether having the path planning algorithm explicitly consider drifting offers meaningful advantages over a “naive” path planning just deciding the desired course, and the steering/stability control system then trying its best to achieve that? After all, Tesla’s Track Mode already does try to figure out the optimal amount of drift for best cornering AIUI?…