Hankook Tire has unveiled its Transforming Tire, developed through the Next Driving Lab project, which changes its shape in response to road conditions.
Designers began by challenging the stereotypes about tire shape, which hasn’t changed since the invention of tires. Until now tires have been designed to only allow variation of tread and flatness ratio (ratio of sectional height and width of tires) according to the performance requirements of the road surface, climate change and operational conditions, based on its original circular shape.
Hankook engineers developed the tire in collaboration with Prof. Kyu-Jin Cho and the BioRobotics Lab from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, which won first place in the 2016 RoboSoft Grand Challenge.
“Transforming Tire began with this question: why should a tire be in one form? Our highly successful Next Driving Lab campaign is an opportunity to convey the innovation DNA of Hankook Tire as we continuously challenge the limits of tires,” said Seungbin Lim, senior VP of the Hankook Tire marketing division.
