SRI Tyre Internal Power Generation enables battery free sensors

Falken Tyre’s parent company, Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) has successfully developed technology that generates electric power from tyre rotation and supplies this to peripheral tyre sensors. The company says that this marks a major leap towards achieving Sensing Core Technology applications that will be instrumental in enabling future mobility trends.

Developed in collaboration with Professor Hiroshi Tani of Kansai University, SRI’s Tyre Internal Power Generation Technology breakthrough has been achieved thanks to the addition of a power charging function to the ‘energy harvester’ situated on the inside of the tyre. Static electricity generated during tyre rotation is harnessed and used to charge a power control circuit, which in turn activates and supplies power to an external sensor.

The structures and materials involved in harvesting frictional energy have also been optimised to greatly improve the generated output. SRI’s verification testing has shown that when a tyre is running at 50km/h, the system produces over 800W of power, which is enough to activate an external sensor without the use of batteries and achieve continuous Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmission.

“To date, the limited battery life of sensor devices has been one of the greatest obstacles to making tyre sensing technology a reality,” says Dr Bernd Löwenhaupt, managing director, Sumitomo Rubber Europe GmbH. “This development is therefore important for SRI’s overarching Sensing Core Technology, which holds enormous potential for future applications such as autonomous vehicles.”