Bridgestone invests in proactive ride technology with ClearMotion

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Bridgestone Americas Inc. has invested in ClearMotion Inc. to incorporate road-sensing technology into its products to build a smoother ride.

Bridgestone will work with ClearMotion to develop new anti-vibration technologies through its Firestone Industrial Products business. The investment amount is not being disclosed. Currently, no new jobs are being added, said Scott Damon, president of Firestone Industrial Products, a Bridgestone business focused on anti-vibration technologies.

Bridgestone is the only tire and rubber manufacturing company invested in ClearMotion, which is based in Boston.

Firestone had been watching ClearMotion, originally called Levant Technologies, since its startup, especially paying attention to its projects related to low-frequency damping on vehicles, said Damon. Both companies were looking for ways to reduce vibration and create a better ride, and the synergy brought them together to begin a conversation that accelerated in about the fourth quarter of 2016.

"There was a lot of excitement (at ClearMotion) that matched our vision, and around where both companies are trying to go in a world that's going to be more digitized in transportation and more autonomous," Damon said.

The investment was completed at the end of March. ClearMotion, which designs and builds digital motion control systems, developed a forward-looking technology called proactive ride. That technology could be coupled with Firestone products to improve vibration control and reduce noise, vibration and harshness in vehicles, said Graham Brookes, director of technology for Firestone Industrial Products.

"Noise in the ride starts where the tire hits the road. Everything the tire sees from the road—the surface, the pothole—that is what gets transmitted through to the vehicle, and that is what you feel as a driver," he said.

Combining knowledge

Firestone used air springs and its elastomeric products to take out much of that noise and impact harshness, but still used a standard damper alongside those efforts, he said.

"If you can add now a smart damper with a high-level engineered tire for comfort and the elastomers, and they're all tuned as a corner module, you can optimize all of those elements to make a superior ride," Brookes said.

Putting ClearMotion's technology in place, Firestone's setup can react and adjust as quickly as five milliseconds, down from the competitors' 40 milliseconds, Brookes claimed. The system's sensors are kept at the part, and the system is efficiently designed for fluid flow with less resistance through valving.

"It's almost like full active. It doesn't look forward, but with the speed of action, it's enough to make you think it does," he said. "It's very, very efficient and the sensors are very accurate.

"Basically, we were already on a course, and ClearMotion was on a similar course but with a different product," he said. "Where we come together, we're greater than the sum of our parts because we've really increased our horsepower in accelerating our departments together."

No specific time frame has been discussed for developing new products. The investment is centered around finding ways to advance both companies' technology and core competencies, Damon said.

Currently, both ClearMotion and Firestone teams are working through a dedicated program management function involving a collaboration among Bridgestone tech centers in Akron and Yokohama, Japan, mirroring program management at ClearMotion.

As the teams' initiatives are developed, they will set goals and a timeline, Damon said.

"It's not unlike how we would develop a new product within our company," he said.

The investment is also forward-looking, including products that could be used in more autonomous vehicles, Brookes said.

"We're dealing with today's vehicle that you interface with, which has a certain amount of requirements to give you the optimum driving machine, through to the full-autonomous, where it'll be an SAE Level 5 vehicle with no steering wheel, no pedals or anything like that," Brookes said.

"We understand the interaction of NVH of the vehicle and how the user of the vehicle will change over time from a semi-autonomous state to a full autonomous state, and how much the influence of ride quality will matter in the future," Damon said.

From a broader Bridgestone perspective, the investment is one of several areas where the company is trying to accelerate a strategy around the future of transportation and ride quality, Damon said.