Michelin charting a safer course with new mobility acquisition

GREENVILLE, S.C.—If we knew what our tires knew, how much further could we go? How much safer could we be?

And what, exactly, do our tires know? About us—as drivers—and the roads we travel?

As mobility technology continues to evolve, tire makers are exploring those questions, and turning to their products for insights on moving forward. Whether it's collecting data that provides critical information to help fleets and individuals better maintain their tires or communicating with surrounding infrastructure to further the development of autonomous vehicles, tires are playing crucial roles.

Just ask Michelin.

"Tires play an absolutely vital role in the job of linking the vehicle to the road," Michelin North America Inc.'s Guillaume Puiseux told Rubber News in an email interview. "If you think about it, without tires, mobility—as we know and understand it—would not be where it is today. With such a critical position on the vehicle, tires are able to feel a lot of what is happening in terms of driving behavior, road conditions, weather conditions, etc."

Those connections, the ones tires have to roadways, play critical roles in understanding how to ensure safer mobility in the years ahead. It's an insight that Michelin is leaning into as it commits to ensuring safer mobility across the globe.

That's where Michelin DDi comes in.

"As Michelin began to explore and enter the world of road safety insights, we formed Michelin DDi, which stands for Driving Data to Intelligence," Puiseux said. "Michelin DDi's collective expertise is in acquiring and transforming data obtained on driving behavior with the intent to deliver superior services, which help shape the development of a preventive-based road safety approach."

That initiative—using data to better understand driver behavior and, ultimately, create safer roadways—is a global one for the tire maker, and it has taken root in North America. Now, Michelin is poised to take those safety-related data points and insights even further with one of its latest acquisitions.

The tire maker, in July, purchased Pittsburgh-based start-up RoadBotics. The company, born out of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in 2016, relies on artificial intelligence to both map and analyze infrastructure with automated and objective data collection, mainly through the use of smartphones.

Those results then are reported through RoadWay, an interactive mapping platform that can rate roads from best to worst using a system that relies on color-coding (green being best, red being worst) and numbering (one to five, with one being best). This, Puiseux said, provides insights into the safety of our infrastructure and the ways we, as drivers, interact with it.

"(RoadBotics) is helping to expand (Michelin's) initiative of collecting data on occurrences such as hard braking, harsh accelerations, phone handlings, excessive speeding and suspected collisions," said Puiseux, who serves as chief strategy and marketing officer of RoadBotics. "By bringing computer-vision expertise into the equation, which considers the driving behavior and past crash data, our machine-learning algorithms can help identify which parts of the road network are the most likely to be the location of future crashes."

The efficiency and effectiveness of data collection and analysis is made even stronger when combined with the foundation that Michelin established with its DDi program.

But it's more than just combining expertise. It's about leveraging complementary analytical perspectives.

"Combined, the RoadBotics process 'sees' the road conditions and Michelin DDi 'feels' how drivers are reacting on these roads," Puiseux said. "While the two teams developed from a different perspective, they both shared the same conviction, that the combination of complementary insights and expertise would be even more beneficial to safer driving and better mobility."

RoadBotics' RoadWay system has been deployed by more than 250 governments around the world as a tool to map and manage their networks of roads and critical infrastructure. The RoadWay system, Michelin contends, is one of the most efficient ways to manage the process, saving time and money that could be better invested in maintaining the roads and infrastructure.

But RoadBotics could be poised to do even more, especially if it can be leveraged to help provide real-time feedback to customers and drivers. And that plays right into Michelin's vision for growth. It's one the tire maker defines as being with, around and beyond tires.

"The RoadBotics team brings computer vision, expertise, market knowledge and the start-up entrepreneurial spirit that made them so successful on their own," Puiseux said. "Michelin's ambition to grow around tires will be bolstered by the RoadBotics acquisition in terms of expanded market footprint, expertise and specific industry know-how."