Goodyear Unveils High Tech Concept Tire at Geneva

Goodyear unveiled a really high tech concept tire at the Geneva Motor Show. The tire has a bionic skin, quite similar to human skin that has the capability to sense the road and external environment. The tire is also highly advanced when it comes to connectivity and can be connected to other vehicles, the traffic network, other vehicles and the world around it.

The concept tire is another variant of the Eagle 360 tire and is meant for use in driverless vehicles moving on busy urban roads. Named Eagle 360 Urban, it is essentially a 3-D printed sphere and is positioned as the first concept tire that is powered by artificial intelligence. It is able to “sense, decide, transform and interact.”

According to Goodyear Europe, Middle East and Africa president, Jean-Claude Kihn: “A revolution will take place at the intersection of autonomy, mobility and connectivity. As this unfolds, tire technology will be even more important than it is today. To safely navigate their surroundings, the autonomous vehicles of the future will need to learn to cope with the millions of possible unknowns we face in everyday driving scenarios. To do so they will need access to data and the ability to learn and adapt.”

Goodyear is pushing the boundaries with this tire, which builds on last year’s revelation of a completely spherical tire, by adding artificial intelligence to give the Eagle 360 Urban a “brain,” bionic skin and morphing tread.

A few years down the line, Goodyear is planning for the tire to become an integral part of a vehicle’s “nervous system” and the connected world of the “Internet of Things”. Goodyear says that the tire can readily adapt to changing circumstances, and the rapid developments in the field of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), especially when it comes to fleets and their users.

The bionic skin is equipped with a network of sensors that makes it possible for the tire to check its own status and collect data about its environment, including the road surface. Through connectivity with other vehicles as well as infrastructure, traffic and mobility management systems, the Eagle 360 Urban tire can also collect information about its surroundings in real-time.

The tire’s bionic skin is made of super-elastic polymer, and is highly flexible, just like human skin. It can easily expand and contract. The outer layer of this “skin” acts as the covering of a foam-like material that is flexible but strong enough to tolerate the weight of a vehicle. The flexibility of this foam-like material makes it possible for the actuator elements embedded beneath the tire’s surface to reshape individual sections of the tire’s tread design. These components can basically change shape with an electrical input, just like human muscles. Thus, the tire can add ‘dimples’ for wet conditions or smooth the tread for dry conditions. A new tread with a safer contact patch is thus deployed.

This morphing tread is used by the Eagle 360 Urban tire to adapt to changes in weather and road conditions. The concept tire has the capability to share the information it has obtained, it response to this information and the success of this response using the Internet of Things.

In the event that the tire’s bionic skin is damaged, the sensors located in the tread can locate the puncture. The tire can then rotate to create a different contact patch, thus reducing the pressure on the puncture and allowing the self-healing process to start.

Goodyear’s concept tire has proved to be a true showstopper in Geneva. In the event tha the tire ever enters production, it can totally transform the tire industry.