2026-09-01 04:00 UTCOriginal source2 min readUpdated: 2026-09-01 09:06 UTC

Vehicle Drift Emergence: Continuous Evolution from Grip Driving to the Handling Limit via Boundary Exploration Learning Model Predictive Control

arXiv:2608.28723v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Automated drift controllers commonly track a prescribed drift equilibrium, sideslip reference, or trajectory. These formulations establish how to execute drift, whereas the continuous transition from grip driving to drift near the handling limit remains unresolved. This paper defines drift emergence in a repetitive lap time minimization task, where neither the controller objective nor the reward contains an explicit drift reference. A boundary exploration learning model predictive controller (BE-LMPC) constructs an empirical safe set and a locally shifted terminal cost from completed laps. By iteratively improving spatial speed allocation under a fixed global speed bound, the controller progressively explores larger sideslip and yaw rate envelopes while preserving recoverability. As lap performance improves, sustained sideslip and pronounced yaw motion emerge while the rear axle approaches saturation. Analysis shows that, when external conditions vary smoothly, the transition from tire adhesion to sliding does not itself cause abrupt changes in tire force or vehicle state. The combined-slip Fiala model satisfies this continuity condition at the transition. At a tire road friction coefficient of 0.6, lap time decreases from 49.95 s on Lap~3 to 25.50 s on Lap~12, with drift first emerging on Lap~11. Lap~12 reaches 16.5$^\circ$ sideslip and 0.894 rear axle utilization. In contrast, no drift is detected for friction coefficients from 0.8 to 1.2; at 1.2, a similar peak speed is achieved with only 0.483 rear axle utilization. These results characterize drift as a conditional continuation of limit handling that emerges when increasing performance demand approaches the available tire capacity, rather than as a separately prescribed motion mode.

SourcearXiv RoboticsAuthor: Sheng Zhao, Binh-Minh Nguyen, Hangyu Lu, Xiaodong Wu

-->

[Submitted on 28 Aug 2026]

Title:Vehicle Drift Emergence: Continuous Evolution from Grip Driving to the Handling Limit via Boundary Exploration Learning Model Predictive Control

View a PDF of the paper titled Vehicle Drift Emergence: Continuous Evolution from Grip Driving to the Handling Limit via Boundary Exploration Learning Model Predictive Control, by Sheng Zhao and 3 other authors

View PDF HTML (experimental)

Abstract:Automated drift controllers commonly track a prescribed drift equilibrium, sideslip reference, or trajectory. These formulations establish how to execute drift, whereas the continuous transition from grip driving to drift near the handling limit remains unresolved. This paper defines drift emergence in a repetitive lap time minimization task, where neither the controller objective nor the reward contains an explicit drift reference. A boundary exploration learning model predictive controller (BE-LMPC) constructs an empirical safe set and a locally shifted terminal cost from completed laps. By iteratively improving spatial speed allocation under a fixed global speed bound, the controller progressively explores larger sideslip and yaw rate envelopes while preserving recoverability. As lap performance improves, sustained sideslip and pronounced yaw motion emerge while the rear axle approaches saturation. Analysis shows that, when external conditions vary smoothly, the transition from tire adhesion to sliding does not itself cause abrupt changes in tire force or vehicle state. The combined-slip Fiala model satisfies this continuity condition at the transition. At a tire road friction coefficient of 0.6, lap time decreases from 49.95 s on Lap~3 to 25.50 s on Lap~12, with drift first emerging on Lap~11. Lap~12 reaches 16.5$^\circ$ sideslip and 0.894 rear axle utilization. In contrast, no drift is detected for friction coefficients from 0.8 to 1.2; at 1.2, a similar peak speed is achieved with only 0.483 rear axle utilization. These results characterize drift as a conditional continuation of limit handling that emerges when increasing performance demand approaches the available tire capacity, rather than as a separately prescribed motion mode.

Subjects:

Robotics (cs.RO)

Cite as: arXiv:2608.28723 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2608.28723v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.28723

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Sheng Zhao [view email] [v1] Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:41:28 UTC (786 KB)

Full-text links:

Access Paper:

View PDF

HTML (experimental)

TeX Source

view license

Current browse context:

cs.RO

new | recent | 2026-08

Change to browse by:

References & Citations

NASA ADS

Google Scholar

Semantic Scholar

Data provided by:

Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle

Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)

Connected Papers Toggle

Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)

Litmaps Toggle

Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)

scite.ai Toggle

scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)

Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle

alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)

Links to Code Toggle

CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)

DagsHub Toggle

DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)

GotitPub Toggle

Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)

Huggingface Toggle

Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)

ScienceCast Toggle

ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)

Demos

Replicate Toggle

Replicate (What is Replicate?)

Spaces Toggle

Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)

Spaces Toggle

TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)