The reappearance of the delorean of the future, this time as an autonomous vehicle for university research. Researchers at Stanford University, in collaboration with the University of California in San Diego, have modified a DMC-12 Delorean, the iconic saga car "Back to the future", to make it a rolling laboratory of autonomous driving. The project, nicknamed "Marty".
The curious thing about this news, which has gained relevance this week by publishing new progress of the project, is the objective of the researchers. They want to teach autonomous driving systems to control a vehicle in borderline situations, on the verge of adhesion loss. The idea is that, if an autonomous car can dominate a skid to the purest style of a rally pilot, it will be infinitely safer in unexpected emergency situations, such as dodging a sudden obstacle on wet or ice cream asphalt.
So, while the original delorean needed a ray (and a fluzo capacitor) to travel in time, its 21st century version is helping artificial intelligence to "travel" to the limits of physics to create autonomous cars of the future. Without a doubt, a very original way of joining an icon of pop culture with the most advanced research.
