Drift champ Vaughn Gittin Jr. has slithered his way around racetracks in just about every machine imaginable, including a 900-horsepower Monster Energy Ford Mustang RTR along the length of the Nurburgring. Your author cant even do that within the virtual confines of Forza, fer chrissakes.Now, Gittin can add teleoperation to his rsum. Seriously.At Goodwood this past weekend, the man himself donned a Samsung virtual reality headset and flung a Lincoln MKZ around the Festival of Speed drift area while standing hundreds of metres away from the car itself.Touted as the worlds first remotely-controlled 5G car, the stunt was an opportunity for U.K. mobile provider Vodaphone to show off the low latency of its snazzy new 5G network. The test allegedly produced a latency of less than 100 milliseconds, which is surely better than the latency found in the vast majority of human drones sailing along the 401 highway.Keep in mind, though, that there are few users on the 5G network right now, a detail which certainly contributed to the low latency numbers.Still, controlling a full-size car over a cellular network is one helluva achievement. The teleoperation system is built by a company called Designated Driver, which first announced the technology back in March of this year.In addition to addressing the critical and non-negotiable issues of latency and safety, our product has been designed to be easy to deploy and use, said Designated Driver CEO Manuela Papadopol. This enables the best user interaction and experience for both passengers and teleoperators.Any sort of teleoperation a term which, we have to acknowledge, instantly calls to mind teleportation needs to have near-zero delay for driving inputs, lest your eco-friendly transportation pod suddenly careen headlong into a school bus full of disabled orphans. For this test, Gittin piloted the car from Samsungs Future Lab zone at Goodwood, where he sat in a state-of-the-art G-force Vesaro racing seat, a perch which not all future teleoperators will enjoy.Its interesting and gob-smacking tech, one which needs to be made right before being unleashed on public roads. Until then, your author will enjoy watching YouTube drift pros huck Lincolns around closed
Origin: Vaughn Gittin Jr. drifts a Lincoln he’s not sitting in