The Birth of the Cyber Tyre

The Cyber Tyre was born in 2001 during a meeting in Berkeley between Fabio Romeo, then a Pirelli executive responsible for a business unit that dealt with the development and commercializaι tion of new tire concepts,and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. The point of the meeting was how to collect the information that the tires "see" when they meet the road! In 2001 at Berkeley, there was a great deal of activity in the area of wireless sensor networks originated by the "smart dust" concept pioneered by Kris Pister. Groundbreaking research was carried out at the Berkeley Wireless Research Center on pico-radios with minimal power consumption (Jan Rabaey), energy scavenging (Paul Wright), tiny operating systems (Dave Culler), node architecture and design (Kris Pister), and design methodologies for wireless sensor networks (Alberto) and at the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center on smart integrated sensors.