Look Ma, No Mirrors: Mirrorless Mitsubishis Coming To Japan In 2019

Mitsubishi is in the middle of a major overhaul, which includes adding distinctively-styled, tech-friendly crossovers to its lineup.

Last year, the automaker also revealed plans to unveil six all-new cars by 2020. Those are some ambitious goals, but Mitsubishi’s also got some tech to go with those vehicles, including cameras that can replace traditional exterior mirrors.

The Japanese automaker recently announced it has developed the highest performing automotive camera technology in the automotive industry. Mitsubishi claims its cameras can detect an object that’s roughly 100 meters (328 feet) away. The tech, which is based on the brand’s artificial intelligence, is expected to reduce the amount of accidents on the road, especially ones that occur during lane changes.

While replacing your car’s mirrors with cameras sounds like it would be terrifying, the system has a computational visual-cognition model that allows it to mimic human visual behavior to focus on specific areas within the field of view. The system can also differentiate between cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians.

Compared to some of the cameras found on vehicles at the moment, Mitsubishi’s tech extends the maximum distance of object detection from 30 to 100 meters. The accuracy of object detection is also improved from 14 to 81 percent. The automaker plans to place its tech onto vehicles in Japan by 2019. The brand, though, has had some practice with the CA-MiEV concept that came out in 2013.

The move to eliminate wing mirrors off of vehicles was spurred on by a decision that Japan made back in 2016. The country became one of the first to allow the use of cameras instead of mirrors. Mitsubishi isn’t the only automaker to look into mirrorless vehicles, as BMW unveiled the i8 Mirrorless Concept at CES 2016. Two years ago, the automaker claimed it would try to have mirrorless tech on its vehicles by 2019.