SENSING TIRE WEAR Has your car ever lost traction with the road during
at the tire to measure
inclement weather? When car tires wear out, they
wear. This technology
pose a huge safety threat to vehicles and drivers.
is similar to the radar
Although the lifespan of a tire depends on many
used in air traffic control
factors, like the type of vehicle, driver habits, road
towers and aircrafts.
conditions, and tire brand, drivers are encouraged to change their tires when the tread wears out.
their work at ACM MobiSys
It was during a visit to Bridgestone Americas Technical
2020, winning Best Paper
Center in Akron, Ohio that researchers from Carnegie
Honorable Mention and
Mellon University, Akarsh Prabhakara, Vaibhav Singh,
the Best Demo awards.
Swarun Kumar, and Anthony Rowe, came across this interesting problem – How can we measure and monitor tire wear? Today, every car has tire pressure sensors. But what if they also had tire wear sensors? This would increase safety on the road, save drivers money, and ultimately, save lives. “Wear measurement today is either done manually with a coin, or using full resolution laser scans,” said Akarsh Prabhakara, Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering. “Neither of these techniques provide a convenient solution to mount on a car and to deal with different kinds of debris that may stick in the tire over time. Designing a wear sensor is challenging.”
Swarun Kumar
“Millimeter wave radars are common in vehicles today,” said Prabhakara. “It’s used for collision avoidance, cruise control, and other such features. Our system repurposes these radars for tire wear sensing.” The radar data is processed using a technique called Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar. This technique exploits the natural rotation of the tire and boosts the resolution of commodity radars to be able to measure millimeter changes in tire wear. This technology also includes special metallic structures stuck in the groove serving as markers and ensuring that the radar still receives important reflections even when dust, snow, or similar debris gets accumulated in the
They started working on this problem in October 2018
grooves. In addition to tire wear sensing, their system
in collaboration with Bridgestone. After experimenting
also tackles another important problem – detecting
with different technologies, their solution uses a radar device mounted in the tire well that emits radio waves
Anthony Rowe
12
Recently, they presented
THE CI RCUIT
and localizing harmful, foreign objects, like nails. “This technology provides a sensing infrastructure which can measure tire wear accurately, without embedding any sort of electronics in the tire and being resilient to debris,” said Prabhakara. “Our ultimate goal is to save lives.”
