Mitsubishi develops new predictive technology for smoother driving experience

Mitsubishi Electric is developing predictive technology that will suggest a route based on your previous driving history, come up with an alternative route if you hit a traffic jam, and make it simple as pushing a button to find that radio program, make those phone calls, and even adjust the air conditioning to boot.

Mitsubishi expects to ship its Ultra-simple HMI (human-machine interface) technology for in-car operations to auto manufacturers by spring 2018. It demonstrated a prototype system in a recent Open House event at its headquarters in Tokyo.

In a mock-up driver's seat, the driver was able to easily operate four main functions: navigation, phone, air conditioner, and audio-visual system.

This was done in one or two steps using a set of three buttons on the steering wheel while viewing three predicted operations on a 44-cm heads-up display (HUD) on the windshield above the dashboard-operations such as Go to soccer practice ground, Call boss, Tune to radio station XYZ.Voice commands can also be used to control such operations and is activated by long-pushing one of the buttons.

For navigation control, the voice recognition technology uses "data stored on board, as well as up-to-date cloud-stored destinations data covering about 10 million locations," Hiroaki Sugiura, general manager of Mitsubishi's design department, said.