If tires can talk, they can demand more respect.
Maybe you will stop letting them become bloated and exhausted. Or they could warn you about a nail in the treadmill that will light the warning light on the tire pressure within a few days. It can even help you drive better, stop faster and get better mileage.
Smart tire technology like this is already in use, and tire companies are adding special sensors to certain tires. Eventually, these technologies will be widely disseminated, said TJ Campbell, manager of tire information and testing at online retailer Tire Rack, because the information that tires can provide is so important.
“I absolutely foresee that this would happen,” he said, “if for no other reason than the basis for autonomous management.”
Self-driving cars will have enough random variables to compete without unexpected tire problems, he said. The more warning there is about a possible problem, such as an air leak or worn tread, the better. A self-driving car will also not have the experience of an experienced human driver if the road is slippery or if the car is close to slipping. Computerized tire technologies will be able to detect the impending loss of traction faster and more accurately than the stability control and traction control systems currently used in most cars.
Although smart tire technologies are available, they are mostly used on expensive tires or in work trucks with fleet managers trying to save every penny.
Changes in temperature and air pressure can have a major impact on the tires and thus cars on a track. Cold tires may not hold up as well as warmer. Meanwhile, tires that are too high will have less contact area with the asphalt, while undersides will not be sturdy enough to provide good control.
Performance of another kind is even more critical for the 14 foot long tires used on mining trucks. These large tires can cost $ 50,000 each and are used on trucks the size of a modest two-story apartment.
“They run the operations 24/7,” said Brian Goldstine, president of mobility solutions and fleet management at Bridgestone Americas. “And they want to maximize the load and maximize the speed of the vehicles inside the mine.”
Sensors in the large tires transmit information that can be combined with other data coming from inside the truck, such as how fast it is moving or how fast it is turning, to get an idea of how the tires handle the rows rather than up trust predetermined rules.
“So they no longer have to use general industry standards about how fast the trucks can drive or how much cargo,” he said. “We give them real-time, real-world data.”
Tire companies also offer this type of technology for modest commercial fleet operations, such as for delivery trucks. As with mining trucks, the information of the sensors in the tires can help fleet operators save money and keep the trucks working during critical working hours.
For such surgeries, Bridgestone often uses sensors that simply screw to the valve stem. These sensors can not do quite as much embedded within the band, but they can still pass on critical information, Goldstine said.
“Today, for example, [there is] the opportunity to recognize a slow leak as it happens before the band reaches the critical threshold, which could cause an emergency or a critical situation, ‘he said.
Most passenger vehicles today already have tire monitoring systems that can warn when a tire has become too low. But usually these low pressure warnings only occur when it is almost a crisis. By measuring air pressure more directly, smart tires can deliver more accurate readings to detect when air is lost, even very gradually, to give earlier and more accurate warnings.
Smart tires can also detect when the grip is lost in some situations. Pirelli’s CyberTire can do this on wet roads by measuring while the tire is rolling, how much its tread bends against the road surface, said Pierangelo Misani, head of research and development at the Italian tire. If the tread does not bend much, it means it is riding on water and losing contact with the solid road surface.
The detection of tread wear is complicated because these sensors cannot measure the depth of the tread. In general, tire companies are working on solutions that involve tire wear by comparing how a tire is used – how many kilometers driven, how many hard stops, etc. – or how it bends or vibrates and compares it with data from the same type of tire in tests.
“We have some wheel speed. We have information on vibration. We have information on the length of the footprint and …. other features of the tire,” said Chris Helsel, senior vice president of global operations and chief technology officer Goodyear. “We can see your carrying state from there, to one millimeter accuracy.”
Better management
Smart tires can also help make so-called “driver assistance systems” work better.
Modern cars already have computerized stability control systems as required by US regulations. These systems work by detecting when a vehicle is starting to slip and re-aligning it by braking briefly on specific individual wheels. Systems that detect the loss of traction within the tire can help cars respond faster and better, tire companies say.
The same goes for anti-lock braking systems, or ABS, another safety system that already exists on modern cars. These systems “pump” the brakes quickly to prevent them from stopping the wheels too quickly – and locking them – so that the tires can slip over the road surface. As the tires wear out, smart tire systems can adjust ABS computers in the car to adjust automatically as the tire level wears out, tire companies say.
“We have shown that we can recover 30% of the loss of stopping distance from new versus worn tires,” Goodyear’s Helsel said.
Before these systems can be widely used, some kind of standardization is needed. Tire companies will have to work together so that all their sensors communicate in a similar ‘language’, ‘Campbell said.
This will mean that one car does not always have to use the same tires. Customers want a choice, Campbell said. Only if these systems are interchangeable, the tires on most people’s cars will start talking.