SOCAR will step up efforts to advance technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect early signs of vehicle tire anomalies.
SOCAR said on the 20th that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with vehicle inspection AI solution company Autopedia for the "joint development of AI tire-reading technology."
Since July last year, SOCAR has managed vehicle tire wear by using Autopedia's AI solution "Doctor Tread." As a result, from January to April this year, the rate of tire-related vehicle breakdowns and the number of customer inconvenience cases fell 22% and 20%, respectively, from the same period last year.
Based on these operational results, the agreement was pursued to further raise the scope and precision of AI readings. The next-generation model aims to go beyond conventional wear readings to precisely detect uneven tire wear, punctures caused by foreign objects such as nails or scuffs, and chunking (rubber tearing).
In particular, the plan is to build a system that uses AI to detect subtle abnormal signs early—signs that were difficult to capture with traditional visual inspections or single-metric readings—so that maintenance can be carried out proactively before failures occur.
SOCAR and Autopedia will jointly participate in the entire development process, including model design, data labeling, and performance verification. SOCAR will contribute real tire image data accumulated through car-sharing operations and diagnostic standards from maintenance sites, and, combined with Autopedia's AI expertise, will advance a high-precision reading model.
Moon Jeong-ung, head of SOCAR's car-sharing customer experience division, said, "Because tire management is directly linked to customer safety, precise, constant inspections and preemptive measures are paramount," and added, "Through technological collaboration with Autopedia, we will detect failure factors that are hard to identify with the naked eye at an early stage and further strengthen safety management so customers can use SOCAR with peace of mind at all times."