CHANGE your summer tyres for winter tyres and vice-versa may soon be a thing of the past, according to a group of researchers at Leipzig University, who are developing the world’s first-ever intelligent tyre which automatically adapts itself to the prevailing weather conditions even while on motion.
A team of researchers headed by Detlef Riemer at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig unveiled the adaptive tyre at this year’s Hanover Fair, an industrial fair in Germany.
According to Riemer, today’s choices of tyres are always a compromise between the ability to brake and petrol consumption. He added that the car driver has to take into consideration every sort of weather condition and unfortunately, changing tyres cannot be done while driving.
But Riemer’s adaptive tyre is equipped with electronic sensors which recognise different sorts of terrain — whether motorway or un-tarmacked roads — and whether it’s dry, raining or snowing. And accordingly, the tyres’ profiles are automatically raised or widened accordingly, even when the car is in motion.
The patented tyre technology is still a long way from a finished product and research is still ongoing, notably on the materials that can be used for the moveable parts of the tyre’s profiles.(PRA)
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