After a century of development, tyres are getting cleverer than ever. Now they are beginning to think for themselves – or at least feed back information automatically. For much of the history of tyres, research and development focused on materials, compounds, construction and processes – all things that have brought tyre technology to where it is today and will take it through tomorrow and beyond. What’s different now is that in the last couple of years we have seen the rise of “clever” tyres, intelligent tyres, even cyber-tyres – call them what you will. The point is that these products are seeking to transform the tyre from being a passive component that runs fine as long it has tread remaining, is cared for correctly and avoids sharp objects. Now it is becoming an active part of modern connected vehicles, providing feedback as to the tyre’s type, state and even environmental conditions. All this is exchanged with the vehicle’s on-board computers in order to optimise performance. In the case of passenger cars this means sharing such data with ABS and ESP, helping the car “feel” the road and conditions.
In between standard tyres and the latest technology we witnessed the advent of ABS and then traction control/ESP. At the same time, tyre pressure monitoring systems (and legal requirements associated with them) were also propagating. And in parallel with this several well-known tyre manufacturers and some far smaller ones have been testing RFID technology, which in some technologies sees microchips being actually cured into tyres so as to offer irrefutable product identification. It seems that at this point in time the challenge is to join up the dots. This certainly seemed to be a theme at the recent Geneva Motor Show (see page 74), with some of the leading manufacturers – namely Goodyear Dunlop – launching their solutions into the public domain and others admitting that they are technologically able to do similar things.
Arguably the first public declaration of ability in this area came from Pirelli at the company’s “Technology in Revolution” event back in 2005. Pirelli’s engineers showed a number of projects including a mobile phone/TPMS connection using Bluetooth – which back then looked to be ahead of its time, but is less appealing now Bluetooth is being widely superseded by WiFi. At the same time the Italian manufacturer shared details of a prototype for its Cyber Tyre, which featured an embedded sensor and wireless transmission technology. Later it emerged that the company had been partnering with TPMS/sensor specialists Schrader and in 2010 vice president of business development at Schrader Electronics, Alfonso Di Pasquale, correctly predicted that cyber tyres would be ready for market just three years later.
Another milestone on the road to intelligent tyre development came from French quarters. Michelin’s fusion of a patented cured-in RFID and direct TPMS technology, completed with a Translogik originated data collection tool, means that the manufacturer was the first to offer tyre pressure, temperature and identity information to tyre technicians this quickly and accurately. The flagship of this project was a contract with East End buses tasked with moving thousands of spectators around during the 2012 Olympics. Of course, other manufacturers offer TPMS systems to commercial vehicle tyre clients – think Bridgestone and Continental (who began showing one such system at truck exhibitions as far back as 2008) to name but two; plus Goodyear and even Chinese firm Mesnac have been working with RFID in tyres for six or seven years now, but Michelin was the most complete system at this point because it also offered the unique benefit of curing the RFID chip inside the tyre, something the company has subsequently made available to all manufacturers through a licensing scheme.
It seems reasonable to say that such systems have their most immediate applications in high value/highly dependent businesses such as OTR tyres. Indeed this is often where such technology is developed and tested before being refined to the challenges of other segments. As we have seen, one is the truck and bus market, which with its emphasis on retreads and the whole-life angle provides a clear rationale for better monitoring and identification – but not without its own challenges (namely the number of tyres and the length of vehicles). Another often overlooked specialist tyre segment is aircraft tyres. According to a reported recently published by Research & Markets, intelligent tyres are expected to have a significant impact on the global aircraft tyre market in the next few years. Thus, the emergence of intelligent tyres is expected to propel the growth of this segment in the next few years.
But for now the attention is the latest fork in this developmental road, Goodyear Dunlop’s “chip-in-tyre”. This system is built on a piezo-powered microchip which, at the Geneva show at least, is attached to the inside of the Dunlop branded tyre. The system sends information on tyre pressure, temperature and, crucially, product identification details to the vehicle’s computer. The vehicle then uses this information in connection with the car’s central computer system to automatically refine the vehicle’s longitudinal and lateral control algorithms, to deliver an improved driving performance. This means the tyre could “tell” the ABS to adapt its on/off vibro-braking pattern to a variation that is better suited to the model, the conditions and even present state of the tyre. Clever tyres indeed.
Source: Tyre Press
Published: 07 Mar 2014