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Air-filled rubber tires have been around for quite a long while, though the evolution of their design has been relatively slow. But we are now seeing inklings of new innovations such as airless tires (at least for bicycles) making an appearance. They may even be 3D printed someday, as French tire company Michelin is proposing with this biodegradable concept tire that is uses computational design to come up with a sensor-equipped tire that can be modified whenever needed, using on-demand additive manufacturing technology.
Presented in a striking blue hue, Michelin's Vision tire has a spongy "permanent structure" that's produced by computational design tools, giving it an organic look that's quite different from the black rubber tires we are so accustomed to. It's this web-like yet solid structure that allows the tire to function without air, eliminating any possibility of a flat tire. The company says that the tire would be made out of organic and recyclable rubber compounds; for example, using orange zest, hay, paper and metal instead of petroleum and synthetic elastomers.
Michelin is behind this concept, so it's less vaporware than usual.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 13 2017, @01:23PM
This isn't new...they've been putting sensors in tires since the late '80s. And usually the information is reported directly on the dashboard, and I'm pretty sure you can also tap into it through the CAN bus, so yes you get access to it. But generally those sensors report tire pressure (and occasionally temperature apparently), so I'm not sure what the purpose would be of having sensors in an airless tire...maybe it counts the rotations or attemtps to measure wear in some other way...