Starting in July, some cars in the Puglia region will be tasked with a strange mission: assessing road conditions using their tires. These vehicles will be equipped with Pirelli's Cyber Tyre connected tires, capable of measuring the roughness of the asphalt and even small irregularities on the road surface. In addition, cameras installed on the cars will film road signs—white lines, signs—to indicate what is missing or disappearing.
Tires that collect information about the asphalt
All of this will be automatically sent to the cloud. Once the data is processed, regional services will be able to consult interactive maps with a precise view of the sections requiring repair. It's a more modern and faster way to have an overview of the road network. The project was presented in Bari by the region's president, Michele Emiliano, and Pirelli's vice-president, Marco Tronchetti Provera.
The system is being tested at no cost to the community, using vehicles provided by the rental company Ayvens.
The idea is for cars to become rolling diagnostic tools, without the need for specific inspection missions. Pirelli has combined two technologies here: its own sensors integrated into the tires and those of Univrses, which provides the on-board vision system. In practice, the service vehicles will send all their data during their regular journeys, allowing the road map to be continuously populated.
This project is part of a broader collaboration between Pirelli and the Puglia region. In 2022, the Italian group already opened a software development center in Bari, the Digital Solutions Center, in partnership with the local university. He is working on factory automation, but also on the integration of artificial intelligence into tire design.
The technology used also allows tires to communicate with the vehicle's electronic systems. Depending on the type of tire fitted – winter, sport, etc. – the safety settings can be automatically adapted. But here, Pirelli is going further by using it to monitor the external environment.
Other projects are already underway, for example with Movyon, a subsidiary of Autostrade per l'Italia, to monitor the condition of highways. If the experiment in Puglia works well, it could give ideas to other regions... or other countries.
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