Yokohama has developed a proprietary tire design support system that uses explainable AI (XAI). This new system provides information that is useful in creating the desired tire features and supplements the knowledge and experience of development staff while making it easier for less-experienced staff to design tires. It also contributes to speedier development and lower costs. Observing these features generates new insights and inspirations that will lead to the development of products with higher performance levels.
The new tire design support system was developed to make Yokohama’s tire development process more innovative. It is based on Yokohama Rubber’s HAICoLab AI utilization concept, which was launched in October 2020. The new tire design support system was developed using a customized version of XAI called SHAP (Shapley additive explanations), which provides developers with features that can be useful for realizing the desired tire characteristics. In addition, the system provides multifaceted indicators that make it easier for developers to understand how to adjust the obtained features. The system will enable less-experienced developers to efficiently develop new tire designs.
XAI uses the standard specifications and targeted characteristic values set by development staff to determine the targeted characteristics that need to be improved and related quantitative values, and it then presents the features that will be useful to improving the targeted characteristics. Development staff then interpret the information presented by XAI (features that can be useful for realizing the desired tire characteristics) from multiple perspectives and modify the specifications. The staff then apply the characteristic value estimation AI developed by Yokohama Rubber to check whether each characteristic value is achieving the targeted level. Final specifications are determined after repeating this process, and XAI can confirm the basis for each of these specifications – the design factors that help improve or maintain each characteristic value and its contribution rate.
Yokohama Rubber plans to use this system to develop a wide range of tire products and broaden the applicable areas of its HAICoLab.
You can find out more about HAICoLab here.
