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Since 2008, all cars in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) have used Dunlop tires with embedded RFID tags to track the tire usage of participating teams, thereby helping to track the identity of the tires used by participating teams without the need to park the cars. And quantity. After the first test in 2008, the application was officially launched.
BTCC started in 1958 and is an annual car race held in the UK every year. The monitoring of racing tires ensures that the participating car teams will not have an unfair advantage by adopting more tires or better quality tires. Before 2008, the organizers had been using a barcode system provided by the software company Datalinx to track tires, according to company director Melvin Fletcher.
The RFID tire tracking system was jointly developed by several companies, including BTCC, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.’s Goodyear Innovation Center, Dunlop and Datalinx. Through the use of electronic tags, BTCC can not only electronically plan the use of tires during the event, but also track vehicles entering the repair station, so that the organizer can publish the information of the vehicles and tires used in the competition to the media and fans on the Internet.
Two readers on the left and right sides of the track read the data of the tire tag, and the third reader obtains the ID code of the vehicle tag
The BTCC tire rules stipulate that each participating team must only use the tires allocated by the organizer to each practice and event, said Robert Lionetti, chief engineer of the Goodyear Innovation Center. Otherwise, some teams may have an advantage over other teams in choosing their own tires. All participating teams are allowed to use only 16 tires per game. By tracking each tire, BTCC ensures that each vehicle uses the correct tire assigned at all times, and all competitors abide by the tire usage rules.
Before the adoption of RFID tires, the staff had to use a pen and record or barcode scanner to manually record the serial number of each tire used by each car in each practice and competition. The vehicle has to be at a standstill in order to record data. In order to make this system more effective and eliminate human errors, such as recording wrong serial codes, the cooperative team developed an RFID system to replace the previous bar system. Dunlop embedded RFID tags in BTCC’s special tires, and the Goodyear Innovation Center installed RFID readers on both sides of the track where the car passed. When the vehicle enters the repair station, the RFID reader reads the ID code of the tag, which allows BTCC to reduce the number of personnel required to manually track the tire ID code.
The organizers tested this system for the first time at the Thruxton circuit in the United Kingdom in May 2008. Datalinx has provided BTCC with software to manage event data and integrated this technology into the event management system.
With this system, the tire wall is embedded with UHF EPC Gen 2 RFID tags produced by Hana Microelectronics in the production stage of the factory. The label has been tested on the ground, Lionetti says, to ensure that it can withstand the heat and pressure of the vulcanization process (heating the rubber to increase elasticity). The unique ID code of each tag corresponds to other data (such as tire manufacturing and transportation time, and use of the fleet). The label is read for the first time after the tire has been produced. When the tire enters the warehouse, is transported to the BTCC, and arrives at the venue of the event, it is read by the handheld device again.
At the competition site, when the tires are allocated to the team, the tags are read by the reader again, and the fixed readers on both sides of the pit lane also read the vehicles entering and leaving the pit. At speeds of up to 40 miles, the reader can read the ID of the tire tag from a few meters away-the track itself is about 4 meters wide. Three readers are installed on both sides of the maintenance station channel. When the vehicle is about to enter the maintenance station for maintenance, the two readers on the left and right sides read the data of the tire tag, and the third reader obtains the ID code of the vehicle tag.
This information is then sent via a wired cable connection to a Web software, Datalinx Tyre Tracking, which compiles and stores tire ID-related data, such as which tire is used by which vehicle. The data is sent to BTCC technical inspectors in real time, who are responsible for supervising the use and maintenance of the tires of the participating teams. In the future, car fans will also be able to obtain tire usage data of their favorite teams and determine whether the team is using a new set of tires or is practicing with broken tires.
Datalinx Tyre Tracking also distributes information to interested parties. “For the organizers, they can ensure that tires are used in compliance with the rules; the team can also understand which tires are running in which section; the media can also understand that the team is using new or used tires,” Fletcher said. Dunlop also uses RFID data to monitor the supply chain, tracking the production of each tire, sending it to the BTCC, reaching the organizer, installing the straight vehicle, and removing the time (based on the reading of RFID tags). So far, this system has reduced the labor cost for BTCC to track tires and has also provided Dunlop with better supply chain visibility. Although Lionetti declined to disclose the price of the label, he said that the benefits of supply chain visibility outweigh the costs.
One of Dunlop’s challenges was to ensure that the tags could be read even when the vehicle reached a speed of 40 miles per hour. According to Lionetti, tag reading reaches 100%, even when the vehicle is traveling at a higher speed.
Dunlop currently only labels tires used by BTCC. However, Lionetti said the company is now looking for other applications of this technology.
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