Jason Ford

Back to the Future: MARTY shows off the skills of an autonomous DeLorean

News

Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, has enlisted his students to transform a 1981 DeLorean into a test bed for researching the physical limits of autonomous driving. 

The vehicle, built in collaboration with Renovo Motors and the Revs Program at Stanford, has been dubbed MARTY, which is short for Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control.

“We want to design automated vehicles that can take any action necessary to avoid an accident,” Gerdes said. “The laws of physics will limit what the car can do but we think the software should be capable of any possible manoeuvre within those limits. MARTY is another step in this direction.”