Why it matters: The future of mobility aims at an interconnected world of traffic where every vehicle exchanges useful information with others in real-time and becomes more aware of its surroundings. Pirelli's latest rubber is a step in that direction, which also became the world's first tire with 5G connectivity for transmitting road information as part of a demonstration of the company's "Advanced Driver Assistance Systems" service.
Vehicle-to-everything or V2X technology has been evolving over the years and focuses mainly on safety as well as providing additional benefits like automatic payments at parking meters or tolls. Pirelli's 'intelligent' tire could eventually become part of this ecosystem of active and passive safety technologies to aid autonomous systems of the present and future.
The company partnered with Ericsson, Audi, Tim, Italdesign and KTH of Sweden to showcase its 5G-enabled Cyber Tire at "The 5G Path of Vehicle-to-Everything Communication" event in Turin, Italy.
The demonstration took place on the roof of a building and showed "how a vehicle equipped with the sensor-fitted Pirelli Cyber Tyre and connected to the 5G network was able to transmit the risk of aquaplaning detected by the tires to a following car," said the company in its press release.
The technology would also be used in the future to monitor other metrics like the tire model, kilometers driven, dynamic load and report the presence of water or other potentially dangerous situations that can result in loss of traction.
"This information will enable the car to adapt its control and driving assistance systems, greatly improving the level of safety, comfort and performance," noted Pirelli, adding that this information will also be relayed to the 5G infrastructure that can forward it to nearby vehicles to make them aware of road conditions that they might soon encounter.
