US team demonstrates extreme autonomy on the racetrack

The system, which was tested on the racetrack aboard a specially adapted Volkswagen GTI and an Audi TTS, could help cars perform more safely in extreme and unknown circumstances, claim its developers at Stanford University in the US.

While current autonomous cars rely on in-the-moment evaluations of their environment, the group claims that advanced understanding of road conditions – such as how to perform an emergency manoeuvre on ice – will be key to pushing driverless cars to the limits.

"With the techniques available today, you often have to choose between data-driven methods and approaches grounded in fundamental physics," said J. Christian Gerdes, professor of mechanical engineering and senior author of a paper on the research in Science Robotics. "We think the path forward is to blend these approaches in order to harness their individual strengths. Physics can provide insight into structuring and validating neural network models that, in turn, can leverage massive amounts of data."