Sumitomo Rubber invests in US vehicle failure prediction startup

Tokyo – Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) has invested in Viaduct, a US start-up specialised in vehicle failure prediction.

The investment follows an earlier partnership with the tech company in August last year, to advance SRI’s “sensorless” technology ‘sensing core’ for tires.

Based in Menlo Park, California, Viaduct has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that detects emerging quality issues and predicts vehicle condition.

In a 10 Jan statement, SRI said the investment, the amount of which was not disclosed, will help the group realise ‘total fleet management services’.

“We have already begun joint demonstration experiments with Viaduct, and this investment will further strengthen our strategic partnership,” said the Japanese group.

Overall, the investment looks to combine Viaduct’s AI-based failure prediction solutions and SRI’s ‘sensing core’ technology to advance failure prediction in all vehicle parts using data from tires.

By providing a “total vehicle failure prediction solution service”, SRI aims to enhance driving safety, improve vehicle availability, and reduce maintenance costs for fleet operators.

As previously announced, SRI and Viaduct aim to use SRI’s “tire wear” detection technology and Viaduct’s 'temporal structural inference' (TSI) engine interface for the solution.

The TSI engine interface models “complex, high-dimensional data” as measurements of latent vehicle factors to determine anomalies or predict failures.

SRI's 'sensing core' technology, meanwhile, analyses wheel-speed signals – generated by tire rotation – to detect information such as road conditions and tire load.

With the combined technologies, the Japanese group can track vehicle status, including data from the engine and brakes in real-time.