SnapSkan speed bumps will scan your tires, tell you when they're bald

By Luke Dormehl December 14, 2016

Way too many drivers are unaware of the condition of their tires. That’s a major problem because degraded tires with low tread depth makes a car far more prone to aquaplaning, while also increasing its braking distance — making it more dangerous for both the driver and other road users alike.

That’s a problem that Finnish tire company Nokian is trying to solve. Together with car service chain Vianor, it’s developed a smart new service that uses laser-scanning 3D technology to measure the tread depth of car tires. It’ll even SMS you a free report.

“The ultimate goal of the service is to make roads safer for everyone,” Ville Nikkola, Nokian’s head of retail business, told Digital Trends. “Once the drivers know the condition of their tires and understand better the relation between tire condition and road safety we are able to influence road safety more than ever before.”

Currently one of Nokian’s speed bump-style SnapSkan units has been fitted at an undercard car park in Helsinki. Others are set to follow in similarly high traffic areas. As drivers (not just Nokian customers) pass over them, the SnapSkan units automatically measure tire tread, while a camera will records the car license plate. If the driver then requests information via a free text message, Nokian sends out a report — plus a quote for new tires from a nearby dealership if required.

It’s a great way of drumming up business, while also offering a genuinely useful public service.

“We have paid a lot of attention to create [a] unique, meaningful and understandable way to communicate the scanning results and to tell what it really means in practice,” Nikkola continued.

Don’t worry if you don’t live in Finland, either, as there is every chance that the SnapSkan technology will roll out elsewhere before too long. “At the moment we are analyzing the demand and potential in all core markets of Nokian and we are preparing the global execution plans early next [year],” Nikkola said.

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I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…

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Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Mobile

4 simple pieces of tech that helped me run my first marathon

Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar displaying pace information.

The fitness world is littered with opportunities to buy tech aimed at enhancing your physical performance. No matter your sport of choice or personal goals, there's a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It'll cost plenty of money, but the gains can be marginal -- and can honestly just be a distraction from what you should actually be focused on. Running is certainly susceptible to this.

A few months ago, I ran my first-ever marathon. It was an incredible accomplishment I had no idea I'd ever be able to reach, and it's now going to be the first of many I run in my lifetime. And despite my deep-rooted history in tech, and the endless opportunities for being baited into gearing myself up with every last product to help me get through the marathon, I went with a rather simple approach.