AUTOMOTIVE Drivers under
Jonathan Newell finds out how external tyre sensing aims to take the pressure off motorists to make regular checks of their tyres.
I
t has to be done but, let’s face it, probing tread depths around the car and stopping to take all the caps off and check the air pressure in your service station is a bit of a drag and it rarely gets done between servicing except by the most conscientious of drivers. Even heavy goods vehicles are not immune. Despite
going through a much more stringent and regulated servicing regime, most of those which are on Britain’s roads fall short of tyre standards on at least one tyre. This is a situation that UK based tyre inspection technology company, Wheelright wants to correct in a way that places the least burden on the motorist and which is most likely to result in improvements. The way Wheelright approached this was to take the technology out of the vehicle and place it into the roadway so that the driver could simply drive over a set of sensors and receive results of tyre pressure and tread depth measurements either through SMS or from a print out from a conveniently located kiosk.
❱❱ Wheelright CEO John Catling wants to improve vehicle tyre compliance through technical innovation
ROADWAY SENSORS Tyre pressures are taken when the vehicle drives over road-embedded sensor plates and the tread depth is measured using sophisticated multi-image technology and imaging software. The technology is based on a combination of unique strain gauge sensors that measure tyre pressure and conventional load cells that monitor the vehicle’s weight. The system uses 480 sensors in total, 240 on each side. They are incorporated on the underside of ten stainless steel plates which flex as the vehicle drives over the instrument. Each wheel on the vehicle is measured as an
isolated component, so any change of speed experienced if the vehicle accelerates or brakes has no effect on the overall result. The technology’s software handles multi-wheel and multi-axle measurement by identifying the individual tyres from the contact patch read by the sensors and the space between the individual contact patches.
DAQ, Sensors & Instrumentation 2017 /// 9
pressure ❱❱ Drive-over sensor strips measure tyre pressure and tread depth
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