Understanding tire/road stick-slip interactions with embedded rubber force sensors

Pneumatic tires are widely used for mobile robots and vehicles. Tire/road interactions play an important role in the safe operation and design of these systems. In this paper, we focus on the tire/road contact problem and study the stick-slip interactions between the stationary tire and the firm road. A pressure-sensitive, electric conductive rubber sensor is embedded inside the tire rubber layer to measure the force distributions. We analyze the frictional forces and deformation distributions using a cantilever beam-based modeling approach. The analytical results explain the stick-slip evolution between the tire and the road. The analyses and models are also validated by experiments.