Goodyear Adds “Smarts” to Concept Tire

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. introduced a smarter version of its spherical Eagle 360 concept tire, dubbed Eagle 360 Urban, at the Geneva auto show this week.

This year’s edition maintains the ball-shaped design and magnetic levitation technology of the 3D-printed Eagle 360 concept Goodyear debuted at last year’s Geneva show. A spherical tire enables greater maneuverability and connectivity over traditional toroidal units, Goodyear notes.

As with the earlier concept, the updated version uses a host of embedded sensors to analyze road conditions. The 360 Urban adds an artificial intelligence system, which Goodyear says can learn over time and interact with the car’s main computer network and emerging self-driving vehicle technologies. The tire also can share information with other vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure.

By combining these sources of information and processing them via neural networks with deep learning algorithms, the tire can quickly adapt to changing conditions and use AI to learn from its experiences, Goodyear says.

The tire's outer layer is made of a high-strength elastic polymer with the flexibility of human skin that allows it to quickly expand and contract. The skin covers a foam-like material that is strong enough to retain new shapes despite the weight of a vehicle, according to the supplier.

The tire’s skin also can also can locate a puncture and rotate the tire to a different contact patch to reduce pressure on the puncture and allow the tire to self-heal itself. The latter is accomplished by using materials that are designed to flow towards the puncture and form new molecular bonds to re-seal the surface.