Slashdot Mirror
Mitsubishi Electric Believes Its AI-enhanced Camera Systems Will Make Mirrors on Cars Obsolete (ieee.org)
In its annual R&D Open House on February 14, Mitsubishi Electric described the development of what it believes is the industry's highest-performance rendition of mirrorless car technology. From a report: According to the company, today's conventional camera-based systems featuring motion detection technology can detect objects up to about 30 meters away and identify them with a low accuracy of 14 percent. By comparison, Mitsubishi's new mirrorless technology extends the recognition distance to 100 meters with an 81 percent accuracy. "Motion detection can't see objects if they are a long distance away," says Kazuo Sugimoto, Senior Manager, at Mitsubishi Electric's Image Analytics and Processing Technology Group, Information Technology R&D Center in Kamakura, 55 km south of Tokyo. "So we have developed an AI-based object-recognition technology that can instantly detect objects up to about 100 meters away."
To achieve this, the Mitsubishi system uses two technology processes consecutively. A computational visual-cognition model first mimics how humans focus on relevant regions and extract object information from the background even when the objects are distant from the viewer. The extracted object data is then fed to Mitsubishi's compact deep learning AI technology dubbed Maisart. The AI has been taught to classify objects into distinct categories: trucks; cars; and other objects such as lane markings. The detected results are then superimposed onto video that appears on a monitor for the driver to view.
To achieve this, the Mitsubishi system uses two technology processes consecutively. A computational visual-cognition model first mimics how humans focus on relevant regions and extract object information from the background even when the objects are distant from the viewer. The extracted object data is then fed to Mitsubishi's compact deep learning AI technology dubbed Maisart. The AI has been taught to classify objects into distinct categories: trucks; cars; and other objects such as lane markings. The detected results are then superimposed onto video that appears on a monitor for the driver to view.
This Slashdot User believes Mitsubishi is going to be disappointed by their test results.
The vehicle driver is focussed at infinity when looking forwards. If you look at an actual mirror, you can remain focussed at infinity.
If you have to look at a monitor (let alone one that's got cartoons based on target classifications), you have to refocus to the monitor distance. So unless MItsu is planning to project their image to infinity-equivalent, this is NotAGoodIdea(TM) .
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I'm not understanding how this works better than a $0.50 mirror.
I don't respond to AC's.
I think most BMW drivers think they've had this for years.
how about deprecating those awful backup beepers on trucks, snow plows, and other large vehicles.
Sincerely,
A city dweller who appreciates sleep
If something happens (alternator, dead battery), I can get a stalled (or stalling) vehicle to the side of the road. With all these electronic subsystems, if something happens which knocks out the vehicle's electric power, it not just becomes harder to steer and brake (due to lack of assist), but harder to move to the shoulder, with no mirrors present.
I don't mind stuff as augments, but not as replacements, especially with safety devices like mirrors that can mean the difference versus a safe pass versus being a long criminal negligence prison sentence for hitting a motorcycle.
The vehicle driver is focussed at infinity when looking forwards.
When I'm driving I'm not looking at some mountains 10 miles away. I'm spending a lot of time looking at traffic around me, and at upcoming signals which I assure you are not at infinity...
Any good driver is going to be doing a ton of constant re-fosuing from near to far, as they re-scan everything around and upcoming. So a mirror that is really a screen is not an issue as it's just another re-focus with some slightly different information than normal.
You can also take in overlaid information without ever re-focusjng, just from color and shape and size of overlaid markings you would know where something was behind you even if you didn't focus specifically on the symbols to see them as totally crisp.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh wait, it hasn't.
Where I plug in and have all of the cameras piped directly in my brain?
I hate blind spots and having to turn my head to triple check I'm not pulling into someone. An extra mid-body camera would do wonders for getting rid of that anxiety.
I will just keep my mirrors. A solution looking for a problem.
I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of this technology - as was pointed out what's the advantage of this technology over a $0.50 mirror?
When I RFTA, it seems like the technology is really designed for objects in front of the car, which would actually be an advantage.
This past week, I had my first encounter with a deer - I was driving on a country road at dusk when I saw the deer's eyes glowing from the car's headlights. I can see where they would be a hazard as the deer blended into the background of the road.
If the technology described here could avoid these types of hazards in front of the vehicle (including kids running out into the road), I can see it's value.
For things behind the car, where a simple mirror works very well, not so much.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Quantum Blockchain AI-enhanced 8K camera system?
I'm confused by your argument that not having mirrors makes it harder to move to the shoulder in case of a loss of electrical power. You lose electrical power, your engine will die and you coast to a stop while driving to a shoulder - hopefully other vehicles will notice the change in speed of your car and avoid you.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the technology used in contemporary cars; power steering uses hydraulics and power brakes uses vacuum. Without electrical power, your ignition's dead so you're coming to a stop no matter what. Over the years, I've driven several cars with dead batteries and dead alternators to get them to a mechanic and avoid the towing chargers.
In the future, there may be more electrical/electronic actuators but for basic steering and braking power assist, hydraulics and vacuum will probably be around for decades to come - the technology is known, cheap and reliable.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
... to know about cars and trucks in my vehicle's blind spots. I have waist gunners to take care of those.
Cameras are really spiffy on new cars. But they will be replaced by mirrors on high mileage cars that have plenty of life left in them before they hit the salvage yard.
When I did a quick Google search, the claimed increase in drag for side mirrors is 3%-6%.
Let's assume that it's 3%, the car gets 25mpg, the travel life of the average car is 50,000miles and the average cost of gas through this period is $2.50/gal.
With the mirrors, the cost in gas is: (50,000miles / 25miles/gal) * $2.50/gal = $5,000.00
Without the mirrors, the fuel economy goes up to 25.75mpg and the calculation becomes: (50,000miles / 25.75miles/gal) * 2.50 = $4,854.37
Even using the 7% figure in the parent post, the calculation becomes (50,000miles / (25miles/gal & 1.07)) * 2.50 = $4,672.90
While I do understand that any single digit percentage improvement in fuel economy is a big thing for car manufacturers, I'm not sure if the technology can be made cheap enough (even with removing the costs of the mirrors) to be viable and result in an overall reduction in costs for the owner.
Adding technology costs to the basic cost of a vehicle (even though it saves on fuel and other costs) generally does not get car owners excited about the technology.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I would think that one of the biggest safety advantages of getting rid of mirrors and having cameras would be eliminating the potential for night-vision blindness from drivers who think they make the road safer by driving with their high beams on all the time.
If the rear view could be shown without the blinding glare of these vehicles, I would consider that a win.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I hope that there will be a audible and visual reminder to the cars driver that a bike is there. I don't want to be run off the road again. Because a cars driver just does not see bikes.
Passionately Indifferent
What happens when you have 1/2 inch of ice on your sensors or they get covered with mud or bird droppings? At least I can get heated mirrors or clean them off with a scraper.
If it could highlight highway patrol vehicles in my rear view, then that I'd be willing to pay for.
It seems to me nowadays, that mirror use is optional....
Come back when you get into your 40s and the presbyopia starts to set in and tell us how much you like those screens.
I'm past my 40's and I like those screens just fine. I mount my iPhone in my car to use Waze.
I am quite concerned that you and all other responders seem never to look at instruments in the car like the speedometer, since those would mean focusing as close as any other screen...
I myself like to pay attention to how fast I am going. I guess everyone else is just driving staring blankly in the distance. That would explain a lot of the erratic behavior I see in other cars when driving...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At least _somebody_ is watching it, the drivers sure do not.
Now an AI for indicating the directions the driver is going to use and we're good to go.
Vehicle mirrors are quite useful when the vehicle is off yet you want unobstructed vision. Unless you are going full bore driverless and lose everything including all controls, I would be far more concerned these types of systems just drive up the price, lower reliability over passive components (like a real mirror) and don't add any useful function current cheaper systems already provide.
Sorry, but I don't want it. Having been a computer programmer, etc. for decades - I'm not about to trust this thing. Because it's made by PROGRAMMERS, and they forget niggly details from time to time and things go pear shaped.
That's the last thing I need while driving. I'll just stick with a mirror and you know - LOOK AT THE DAMN THING before changing lanes or whatnot. Just like I've done for decades w/o issue.
I rented a car with a back up camera that was great for showing what was behind me but not the car going 50 through the parking lot that would have hit me had I moved. You gotta turn your head and LOOK.
You are irrationally focused on something that can be easily controlled automatically. Cruise control has been around for a very long time
The more I read responses the more concern I feel, and it's all quite rational - when most driving is through city streets (or ever highways) with varied speed, to bring up "cruise control" as a defense is beyond alarming and right up into head-slapping territory.
Keep digging that hole buddy! Or admit that yes in fact as a driver you look at the instrument cluster occasionally, even though it would validate someone elses point. But this being the internet, I can feel safe in assuming you would rather paint yourself as the worst driver that ever lived rather than admit someone else on the internet was correct about anything.
Peace out, I'm no longer in this increasingly absurd thread that 100% ignores how people actually drive. You may continue if you wish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You absolutely DO NOT have to be able to focus your eyes to read a speedometer or other instruments.
In another post (maybe my original) I pointed out you don't have to focus on the electronic rear view screen either, you can easily make out the annotated shapes and colors and sizes to make out important details about what is behind you, where it is and how close without ever really focusing.
which is FAR different from having to read text.
???? You aren't reading text on a rear view mirror either.
Why do you think race cars have those nice, big, analog gauges
You've been watching too many cartoons Speed Racer. Real instrument clusters for race cars are not that large, I have a number of friends into racing enough to install custom instrumentation...
Also it's pretty absurd to bring up race car drivers which have to pay attention to instruments for very different reasons than street car drivers.
Not to mention that *actual* race car drivers are going digital too
Like I told the other responder, I'm out of the conversion now as y'all are just getting more and more absurd on these points and refuse to recognize how real people drive cars all because you are too stubborn to admit when you are plainly wrong.
I guess it's plain to see that many other drivers are scarily not actually looking around while driving. Yowza. Self driving cars cannot come fast enough to get these yahoos off the road.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The signals, etc, certainly are at infinity
The cars next to you certainly are not, no matter which of you is right about where "infinity" is for human vision.
By the way, you are all wrong about focal distance - humans CAN focus out WAY farther than 20-60 feet. Yes hyperlocal distance is closer but that is a term that just means things from close to far are "equally blurry" so to speak, and doesn't mean your eyes will actually rest at that focal point - eyes being eyes they will actually focus until something is sharp unless you are deliberately de-focusing while driving? *shudder*.
Its a shame that so many people's limited understanding of photography has completely misled them as to how eyes actually work. You should really study them sometime, as they are truly amazing...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm more concerned that the system freezes and lures the driver to think the area is free and clear when it's not.
Don't lose power or crash because of bad software.
As kqc said. Why is it that engineers involved with roads forget about cyclists? What sort of professional brain fade goes on?
I read the TFA and was left guessing that cyclists may - or may not - appear in the list of relevant things to detect, somewhere after road markings I would hope.
After moving to Australia and finding that road design, engineering, and motorists are actively hostile to cyclists so I've out the bike away never to ride again, I've found that I've succumbed to the same perceptual bug. I've scared cyclists, and myself, with some near hits.
There's no doubt that signal/ noise filtering by road users is defective. There's a real problem between eyeball and user. That thete's a road user equivalent of PEBCAK is revealed by the rail safety report here that found about half the vehicle collisions with trains involved vehicles hitting the middle or end of the train, not the front. How do you not see a train crossing the road in front of you?
The first and obvious use case for this technology is to detect the most vulnerable road users and prompt vehicle drivers to see the cyclist or pedestrian (or kangaroo or deer).
The mindset for this is about being community-minded, "the roads are public space, we all have to share them". I would be grateful for tech that highlights cyclists and motorcyclists, to overcome my perceptual block.
Anything use case that benefits me as a driver, such as train detection, should be a second-tier use case.
I hope they select the location of the cameras very carefully. The backup camera on my vehicle needs to be cleaned almost every time I use it in the winter. I can just look behind me for the amount of time that I'm backing up, but it would be awful annoying to have to clean 'mirror cameras'. The mirrors on the other hand can get dirt on them and they work just fine.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Am I the only one in the world that uses the side mirrors to back into my garage? As my car slides through the open door I disregard all the complaints from the car's existing sensors because I can see that I have a couple of inches on both sides so I'm good. Don't take away my side-view mirrors!
With something extremely complex. The utter failure of all engineering skill and insight.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's 3% because much of the cost has been externalized in the form of oil subsidies, wars and ignoring environmental damage. As a result shaving 3% off the amount of gas used has a disproportionate impact on the entire global situation let alone any single country's economy, than just the base 3% savings.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Let's hope the design and implementation of this is better that the utterly horrific experience that is the 'in car entertainment system' in our Outlander. It's the first GPS system that actually goes the wrong way to get places (and doesn't know as many places as it should). The UI looks like they just threw all the buttons and gadgets into a box, shook it up and then spewed it out onto the screen.
Years back, I had an old Grand Voyager. One day, a door window fell into the door. Went to get it repaired, $160, and they just replaced the belt. A few years later, newer Grand Voyager, same thing... and twice the price. The mechanic and I both knew that it was just a broken belt... but Chrysler was making the window a sealed unit, so it was motor and everything else, as well.
Yup, replace all your mirrors with AI-aided cameras. And when it dies, it's 3 or 4 figures to replace, no repair, sealed unit.
Let's not even talk about when someone hacks your car, and screws with the AI.....
Please let's not forget that these electronic mirrors will require support electronics, wiring and viewing screens. All of these things use electricity, not free sunlight, for the life of the car. And this electricity detracts from the power of the engine of the car, as does the added weight of the these components.
'Doesn't sound like much savings to me, especially considering that these components WILL BREAK in time. When my $250+ auto-dimming mirror broke after being ~12 years old, I replaced it with a $5 mirror from the junkyard of a car that did not have the pointless, auto-dimming feature.
The AI book that everyone should get is available for pre-order. "Artificial Intelligence For Dummies" by John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron.
I sure hope they require cars to have some sort of standard mirror backup in case of camera or ai failure. Maybe ones that pop out of the doors and ceiling or some such.