Pirelli's "cyber tires" will help monitor road conditions

The government of the Italian region of Apulia and Pirelli have signed an agreement to launch a system that will monitor the condition of the road network in the region to create a map of the "health" of Apulian roads. This will be the world's first road infrastructure monitoring system capable of unifying data collected by Pirelli's "smart" tires, made using Cyber Tyre technology, and cameras from the Univrses startup, installed on vehicles.

The Cyber Tyre system is able to collect and process data from sensors installed inside the tires and analyze parameters such as asphalt unevenness. At the same time, Univrses' technologies using cameras allow for obtaining information about roads and road signs. For the pilot project in Apulia, Pirelli combined the capabilities of "cyber tires" and Univrses cameras, with the goal of providing faster and more efficient road maintenance to improve safety levels.

Special vehicles will send data to a cloud service to create a map of the road network, which, after processing, will be displayed on the digital instrument panels of vehicles. The first cars from the fleet, provided by the equipment rental company Ayvens, will appear on the roads in July 2025.

In addition to the project in Apulia, Pirelli is also launching a number of other similar initiatives, for example, with Movyon – Gruppo Autostrade per l'Italia, which will also allow monitoring the condition of the road infrastructure.

Apulia was chosen due to the region's long-standing ties with Pirelli, which three years ago opened a Digital Solutions Center (DSC) in Bari, which the company calls a great example of public-private partnership. The center collaborates with the Polytechnic University of Bari, and the DSC has already begun implementing a number of projects aimed at optimizing production processes, introducing AI into various stages of tire development, and more.

To commemorate the signing of the agreement, a press conference was held on June 10 in Bari, attended by Governor Michele Emiliano and Pirelli's Executive Vice Chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera.

"We are proud to sign this forward-looking agreement, which is of great importance, as is everything related to citizens' safety," Emiliano said. "Technologies can save lives. In this case, with their help, we will create a 'thermometer' for monitoring the 'health' of our roads. By combining innovation and thoughtful long-term planning with the best practices of the tire company, we have concluded a historic agreement that will not cost the region anything and, as I am sure, will yield significant results. For us, this is not the first partnership with Pirelli, and I would like to thank them for their trust in our region, where we always strive to use new opportunities created by technological innovations. I mean, in particular, the Digital Solutions Center, which works with the academic world and our talented youth. I am confident that we have a long way to go, and together with Pirelli, we will be able to guarantee maximum safety for the residents of Apulia."

Marco Tronchetti Provera emphasized that "the new agreement and the experiment itself represent another important stage in the work on introducing innovations, which we have been carrying out together with the authorities of Apulia for several years."

According to him, the Cyber Tyre technology, which is designed to help develop connected vehicles in the future, allows for high-precision analysis of the road infrastructure, and currently, the company, together with the regional authorities, is assessing the possibility of further projects in the region, which are planned to be launched after "we leave behind some corporate problems."

Earlier, the US authorities informed Pirelli that automakers that install "cyber tires" on their models may need to obtain special permission to sell them in the country. This is due to the fact that the US restricts the use of Chinese technologies in connected vehicles, and the main investor of Pirelli is the state-owned holding company Sinochem from the PRC. Due to possible problems in the American market, Sinochem was stripped of control over Pirelli, but the dispute has not been resolved yet.

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