Toyo develops AI-based model to estimate tire wear

HYOGO, Japan — Toyo Tire Corp. has developed a maintenance solution for transport vehicles that monitors the condition of tires and estimates their state of wear using artificial intelligence (AI).

The Japanese tire company is now offering an "automated tire information gathering system," which uses TPMS sensors installed on the wheels of trucks, buses and other transport vehicles.

The system collects data on tire conditions, such as air pressure and internal temperature, and then stores information in real time on location and acceleration by using the global positioning system (GPS).

The collected information, Toyo said, is needed to increase the accuracy of estimating tire conditions.

Along with the data-collection system, Toyo has developed a tire-wear estimation model for commercial vehicles.

It combines the data collected by the automated tire-information-gathering system with the tire manufacturer's data, weather and other information from external databases.

It then uses AI to analyze the aggregated data to estimate and detect the tires' use conditions with higher accuracy.

Toyo said it came up with the model after a series of demonstrative experiments.

The technology, it said, enables transport service providers to digitally estimate the conditions of their tires without needing to take measurements of each tire manually.

Toyo said it teamed up with Nihon Tata Consultancy Services, part of the Tata Group, for the development of the automated tire information gathering system and SAS Institute Japan Ltd. for the development of the tire wear estimation model.

The tire maker said it would consider building such maintenance solutions as a business model.