WheelRight Ltd - Novel automated off vehicle tread depth and tyre inspection system

确保商业车队保持适合道路使用的轮胎不是一件容易的事。大型车队的经理通常要负责成千上万的轮胎。使用不符合标准的轮胎运营商用车的罚款为5000英镑，每使用一个违规轮胎扣3分。责任落在司机和车队经营者身上。为了使车队在经济上可行，管理者要确保他们的车辆在路上行驶，最大限度地减少检查时间。毫无疑问，改善商业车队的轮胎管理有很大的潜力，以确保它们正确充气，胎面在法律限制内，秃顶、割伤和侧壁损坏被识别出来。但目前的人工检查成本高，频率低，而且往往做得很差。WheelRight有限公司开发了一种安装在道路上的设备，当一辆装有充气轮胎的车辆驶过时，该设备会计算车辆所有轮胎的压力，并测量车辆的重量和负载分布。这种综合系统在商业车队中运行。下一阶段是整合自动检查轮胎胎面横跨每个轮胎的圆周和侧壁。我们的目标是使轮胎检查过程自动化，针对轮胎，准确和易于使用，改善轮胎维护对社会的潜在效益是显着的。英国运输部报告称，2010年，非法、有缺陷和充气不足的轮胎在英国造成了1210多起交通事故伤亡。在高速公路上使用的50辆HGV车队可以通过更好的轮胎胎面和侧壁检查为每辆车节省超过650英镑。轮胎在使用寿命结束前将不再被送往垃圾填埋场。WheelRight技术有可能大幅减少燃料和轮胎浪费以及相关的碳排放，并提高道路安全。

Ensuring commercial fleets maintain road worthy tyres is not an easy task. Managers of largefleets are often responsible for 1000’s of tyres. The penalty for operating a commercialvehicle with non-compliant tyres is £5,000 and three penalty points for each illegal tyre. Theresponsibility falls on the driver and the fleet operator. To run financially viable fleetsmanagers ensure their vehicles are on the road, minimising the time for inspection.Unsurprisingly there is significant potential to improve the management of tyres withincommercial fleets to ensure they are correctly inflated, tread is within the legal limit, baldpatches and cuts and damage to sidewalls are identified. But current manual inspections arecostly, infrequent and often poorly done.WheelRight Ltd has developed a road mounted device which, when driven over by a vehiclewith pneumatically inflated tyres, calculates the pressure in all of the vehicle’s tyres, as wellas measuring vehicle weight and load distribution. This integrated system is in operation withcommercial fleets. The next stage is to integrate automatic inspection of the tyre tread acrossthe circumference of each tyre and the sidewall. It is our goal to make the process of tyreinspection automatic, specific to the tyre, accurate and easy to useThe potential benefit to society from improving tyre maintenance is significant. TheDepartment for Transport report that illegal, defective and under-inflated tyres wereresponsible for more than 1,210 road casualties in Great Britain during 2010. An HGV fleet of50 vehicles used on high mileage motorway routes could save over £650 pa for each vehiclefrom better tyre tread and sidewall inspection. Tyres will no longer be sent to landfill beforetheir operational life is complete.WheelRight technology has the potential to dramatically cut fuel and tyre waste and theassociated carbon emissions and increase road safety.