Stanford engineers test out their autonomous Audi

Stanford University mechanical engineering professor, Chris Gerdes and his team of engineering students have been working on an autonomous, custom-made Audi TTS, which they call “Shelley”.

Shelley has finally hit the racetrack on a three-mile track at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, California, reaching speeds near 120 mph.

While the car is capable of achieving those higher speeds, Gerdes and the team mainly tested the vehicle at speeds near 50 to 75 mph, since these are the speeds at which most car crashes occur.

The team set Shelley out on the track in hopes of understanding how the car adjusts its throttle, brakes and makes use of all the friction of its tires in order to help create automatic collision-avoidance software.

“A race car driver can use all of a car’s functionality to drive fast,” said Gerdes.”We want to access that same functionality to make driving safer.”

During the car’s test-run, the student engineers worked to discover how they could improve long-term performance with artificial intelligence, converted controlled behaviors of drivers into computer algorithms, and analyzed the vehicle’s ability to maneuver in ordinary conditions versus emergency situations.

Watch the autonomous racecar in action.

Video Credit: Bjorn Carey, Kurt Hickman, Aaron Kehoe

Story via Stanford University.