Goodyear and Gatik have successfully demonstrated that Goodyear’s intelligent tires, equipped with SightLine technology, can accurately estimate tire-road friction and provide real-time information to Gatik’s automated driving system. This proof-of-concept represents a significant step towards the use of autonomous transportation for safer and more sustainable goods movement.
Goodyear and Gatik have recently implemented a system in Canada for continuously measuring road friction using tire sensor data and other vehicle information. This data is processed using Goodyear’s proprietary cloud-based algorithms to optimize vehicle performance. The friction estimates provided by Goodyear’s SightLine solution were able to detect slippery conditions, such as snow and ice, and make this information available to Gatik’s autonomous fleet. This helps improve safety and performance for Gatik’s commercial operations in Canada’s challenging winter weather.
The ability of tires to provide road-friction data can help improve the safety, smoothness, and sustainability of driving. This information is especially important for autonomous vehicles, as it can be used to plan their route, recommend safe driving speeds, set limits on acceleration, and determine appropriate following distances.
Goodyear’s SightLine technology uses sensor data to measure tire wear, load, inflation pressure, and temperature, and combines this with real-time road and weather data and proprietary rubber friction models to estimate tire-road friction. This information is provided in real-time, enabling Gatik’s fleet to safely and efficiently navigate challenging conditions within its operational design domain. While the future applications of Goodyear’s SightLine technology for autonomous driving are significant, it is also expected to be deployed on certain original equipment vehicles this year, bringing immediate benefits to the mobility market.
“The tire is the only part of the vehicle that touches the ground, and this new level of data sophistication can communicate vital information to the vehicle, enhancing safety and performance,” said Chris Helsel, Goodyear’s senior vice president, Global Operations and Chief Technology Officer. “This is another step to evolve the tire to not only deliver its core, traditional job but also be a nexus of new data and information.”
“At Gatik, we’re dedicated to providing our customers with a solution that continues to raise industry standards in safety, efficiency and performance,” said Arjun Narang, Gatik’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder. “Using Goodyear’s groundbreaking SightLine technology helps us to operationalize these principles and ensures that we’re delivering greater value and enhancing safety on the middle mile today.”
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