Mitsubishi To Use Military grade Tech For self-driven Cars

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, the electronics arm of the Mitsubishi group will adopt technology used in Missile guidance systems for use in automated cars. According to a Bloomberg report, Mitsubishi Electronics, which supplies the air-to-air missiles to the Japanese armed forces, is looking to use the technology it used for military purposes to help automated cars detect and avoid obstacles.

Mitsubishi will use components such as millimeter-wave radars, sonars, sensors and cameras which are used in missile guidance systems to help guide automated cars that will be on the roads by 2020. Katsumi Adachi, Senior Chief Engineer at Mitsubishi's Automotive Equipment Division told Bloomberg, "All we have to do is to put together the components that we already have. None of our competitors have such a wide array of capabilities."

Millimeter-wave radar is used to see through fog and other battlefield obscurants—fitted on cars, it can help cars see (and avoid) other cars through inclement weather. Sonar, meanwhile, has already fitted to cars, letting them "hear" objects and determine their distance by bouncing sound waves off of them. It's particularly useful for self-parking applications.

Mitsubishi is a titan of Japanese industry, a manufacturer of everything from space rockets to rice cookers. Mitsubishi is also one of Japan's key defense contractors, building the Type 10 main battle tank and Soryu-class attack submarine. Its AAM-4B medium range air-to-air missile was the first with advanced electronically scanned array radar, making it even more advanced than the American AMRAAM missile.

Now Mitsubishi wants to get into self-driving cars, and it reckons that its military technology will give it a leg up on the competition. According to the article, Mitsubishi Electric is planning on using sensors developed for defense applications to give autonomous cars the eyes and ears to navigate the road.

Most autonomous cars use more than one sensor: Google's driverless cars use sonar, stereo cameras, lasers, and radar. As a defense contractor, Mitsubishi Electric provides sonar for submarines, stereo cameras for tanks, and lasers and radar sensors for all kinds of ships, armored vehicles, and aircraft. Theoretically, that's about all the ingredients it might need.

Mitsubishi is playing catch up in the self-driving car field, but believes that since it produces most of this technology in-house it can quickly catch up. It just better be sure not to accidentally include anything that explodes.