Sumitomo Rubber in link-up to monitor vehicle status in real-time

Kobe, Japan – Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) has advanced its ‘sensing core’ concept in a partnership with Viaduct, a US start-up specialised in vehicle-failure prediction.

Based in Menlo Park, California, Viaduct has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform to detects emerging quality issues and predict vehicle condition.

In a 7 Aug statement, the Japanese group said it launched a ‘joint demonstration experience’ combining Viaduct’s AI platform with its “sensorless sensing technology.”

The project involved the combination of SRI’s “tire wear” detection technology and Viaduct’s 'temporal structural inference' (TSI) engine interface, explained SRI.

The TSI engine interface, it said, models “complex, high-dimensional data” as measurements of latent vehicle factors to determine anomalies or predict failures.

SRI's 'sensing core' technology, meanwhile, analyses wheel-speed signals – generated by tire rotation – to detect information such as road conditions and tire load.

With the combined trechnologies, the partners aim to develop a more advanced “total vehicle failure prediction solution service.”

The project, it added, enables the Japanese group to track vehicle status, including data from the engine and brakes in real-time.

By "monitoring the entire vehicle", SRI expects to improve safety, increase operational rate of vehicles and reduce maintenance costs.