System for Automatically Determining Vehicle Tire Wear Status

摘要

A system involves the use of one or more sensor pins which generate a binary output to determine the position of the tire on the sensor module, and if the depth of the tire tread meets the recommended depth for safe operation. The vehicle drives over two linear sensor modules, one for the driver side tires and the other for the passenger side tires. As the tires pass over the sensor modules, the sensor pins on/off status is recorded and analyzed to determine whether the tires are centered on the module and whether the depth of the threads meet or exceed the recommended depth for safe operation. When both front and rear tires have passed over the sensor modules, the tire statuses will be displayed on a tire status indicator, and a receipt with the tire status will be printed for the vehicle. When used with fleet management systems, the vehicle identification and the tire statuses will also be sent to a data center for further processing.

主权项

1. A method for automatically determining tire wear characteristics of a vehicle tire comprising:
providing a sensor module having an array of spring loaded pins; driving a vehicle so that a vehicle tire rides over said sensor module; sensing the vertical position of each of the pins before the tire rides over the sensor module and transmitting first output data indicative thereof; sensing the vertical position of each of the pins when the tire rides over the sensor module and transmitting second output data indicative thereof; processing said first and second output data to determine the wear characteristic of said tire; and generating an output indicator of said tire wear characteristic.