Having announced that tyres sold on the internal market would be chipped and labelled with a QR code back in 2014, the United Arab Emirates’ authorities have announced plans to roll out tyre chipping by the end of 2017.
Sumitomo Rubber reports that the company has developed a new tyre-sensing technology called Sensing Core. Sensing Core is designed to detect road conditions, tyre load and other information by analyzing the wheel speed signals that are generated by the rotation of the tyres. Sumitomo says the technology will play a role in the advancement of autonomous vehicle technology.
Goodyear has renewed its tyre supply agreement with logistics service provider Ewals Cargo Care, extending a relationship that is more than 20 years old. The pan-European contract covers the supply of tyres for up to 3,000 trailers and 550 tractors as well as a full range of truck tyre support services under the Goodyear FleetFirst banner.
Avery Dennison and Ferm RFID Solutions have together created a tyre tread label that, for the first time ever, offers worldwide RFID functionality. The label allows entire pallets of tyres to be read in a single pass and is compatible with all relevant standards.
Mesnac, the Chinese tyre factory and systems specialist, reports that it is continuing to support the development of international standards for RFID tyre tags – a technology the company has been investing in for more than a decade already. To this end, Mesnac representatives recently spoke at an ETRO (European Tyre and Rim Technical Organization) summit on the subject. ETRO held its meeting in July 2016 in Brussels, Belgium.
Specialists in the field of radio frequency identification (RFID) and experts from the tyre and wheel industries met in Brussels earlier this month to discuss proposed international standards for RFID tyre tags. This first meeting of the ISO/TC31/WG10 Workgroup was held between 11 and 14 July and put flesh on the bones of four standards initially drafted in China with input from Mesnac. The Workgroup was convened by Dong Lanfei, an engineer within Mesnac’s Internet of Things business unit, with Pierre Loiret from Michelin acting as co-convenor.
London-based Silent Sensors reports it has developed a new technology to measure tyre pressure and temperature. According to the company, the system uses passive RFID sensor technology and can monitor tyres using drive-over mats, hand-held readers or while on the road.
A consortium initiated by Tructyre has won £1.2 million of funding for its “Pathway to Autonomous Commercial Vehicles” project. This project aims to develop “an innovative solution to monitor key information from the vehicle and predict safety risks based on analytics”. It builds on a prototype which monitors tyre pressures and temperatures in commercial vehicles, combined with always-on network connection.
Eight projects have been awarded a total of £20 million in funding to research and develop enhanced communication between vehicles and roadside infrastructure or urban information systems, including new ‘talking car technologies’, Business Secretary Sajid Javid announced on a visit to the autonomous vehicles test bed at MIRA in Nuneaton on 1 February 2016.
The projects are the first to be funded from the government’s £100 million Intelligent Mobility Fund. They range from developing autonomous shuttles to carry visually-impaired passengers using advanced sensors and control systems, to new simulation trials for autonomous pods to increase uptake and improve real-world trials.
Translogik is promoting is iTruck system, which tracks tyre temperature, pressure, GPS position and vehicle braking information in real-time.
According to the company, iTruck provides a “rugged and reliable solution” that offers detailed early warnings signals of potential tyre related issues. As a result fleet operator and/or service provider can take swift remedial, which could be the difference between safe operation and a major incident/unnecessary downtime.
The Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has chosen Goodyear as the exclusive tyre partner for the FIA European Truck Racing Championship for the next three years. The partnership extends and expands Goodyear’s long involvement in the series for which it has been producing special developed truck racing tyres since 2004. The tyre manufacturer was rewarded for the proven performance of its tyres with the renewal of its contact, which makes Goodyear a partner of the newly formed ETRA Promotion GmbH (ETRA) – the series’ new promotor.
Tyres have been getting cleverer for some time. RFID chips have been embedded in tyres for a decade or more across a range of applications. Michelin, for example, has patented a special way of embedding RFID chips in truck tyres before curing in such a way that chips are not destroyed by the intense heat and/pressure applied during vulcanisation. As a result, the French manufacturer is able to track its premium commercial vehicle products from new tyre through several retreading cycles. Goodyear has been using the technology in Nascar and other motorsport activities for some time. And Chinese tyre manufacturing equipment maker Mesnac first showed Tyres & Accessories a tyre with multiple RFID chips embedded a decade ago. As useful as all this is, it is only one dimension of what is going on. In short it is just one example of how tyres are now getting even smarter.
Translogik has signed an agreement with Continental Reifen Deutschland GmbH to supply the German tyre manufacturer’s ContiTrade unit with the new iOS compatible version of its TL-G1 Tyre Inspection Probe. 85 kits have been ordered to date as the deployment commences, with significant further orders anticipated.
At the start of October in Paris Michelin launched Michelin Tire Care, a suite of connected software solutions designed to help hauliers get the most out of their tyres. The idea is that fleets get more performance (and therefore financial value) from their tyre purchases as they use the mobile/tablet-based software, and in doing so see the benefit of premium and especially Michelin truck tyre products. While software is clearly at the heart of this latest announcement, Tyres & Accessories considers whether we should be using the term “strategy” instead.
Today Michelin launched Michelin Tire Care, a suite of connected software solutions designed to help hauliers get the most out of their tyres. The idea is that as fleets use the mobile/tablet-based software they both get more performance (and therefore financial value) from their tyre purchases and in doing so see the value of premium and especially Michelin truck tyre products.
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