Yokohama Rubber and Alps Alpine have developed a technology that detects the wear condition of passenger car tires by analyzing sensing waveforms transmitted by a proprietary signal processing technology from a sensor attached to the tire’s inner surface.
The new technology uses sensors to capture sensing waveforms of a rotating tire’s changing shape. This information is then analyzed using a proprietary method to differentiate between new or worn tires. Vehicle owners or fleet managers are then notified when tires need to be rotated or replaced, optimizing tire maintenance, promoting safety and extending product service life.
Yokohama Rubber predicts that as mobility services shift to self-driving vehicles, the opportunity to visually check tires for wear or damage will become less frequent. By being able to remotely monitor a tire’s condition via the cloud, mobility services can become more sustainable, reducing the impact on the environment.
The connected, autonomous, shared and mobility-as-a-service initiatives in Yokohama Transformation 2023 – the company’s medium-term management plan for fiscal years 2021–2023 – included the promotion of a new tire solutions service based on the development of a SensorTire Internet of Things (IoT) tire with sensing functionality and stronger, more flexible service capabilities.
Yokohama Rubber announced its SensorTire Technology Vision in February 2021 and has set out a medium- and long-term development plan for passenger car tire sensors. The tire maker’s new vision aims to provide support for the safe movement of people while addressing changes in mobility demand by providing data obtained from IoT tires fitted with sensing functionality to customers using its service.
To achieve these goals, Yokohama Rubber is currently conducting practical testing with partners from several sectors.
