Mitsubishi Electric unveils EMIRAI S concept cabin

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation unveiled its EMIRAI S concept car equipped with cutting-edge technologies, such as an innovative human-machine interface and biological-sensing technologies, which are expected to contribute to safe and secure transportation as well as enhanced passenger communication in the upcoming mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) society.

The automaker is introducing two new features – biometric driver monitoring and speech control.

The biometric driver monitoring features a contactless heart-rate sensing technology incorporating near-infrared camera, face-tracking technology that continuously tracks driver’s face movements, and body surface temperature. With these monitoring features, the system will be able to analyze heart rate and body temperature to diagnose driver conditions such as fatigue, drowsiness, sudden sickness, etc, as well as distracted driving by tracking drivers’ eyes, nose and mouth motions under a variety of lighting conditions.

Mitsubishi has also installed its proprietary Human Machine Interface AI, which allows drivers to issue vocal commands without the need for a trigger word. To that end, the cameras in the car help isolate different speakers, which in turn allows the EMIRAI S to distinguish casual speech from explicit voice commands while people are chatting in the car.