New patent will make Norwegian winter roads safer

Roadguard has been granted a patent for its innovative system to measure tyre tread depth at speed, solving a critical challenge in extreme environments.

Every winter, vehicles slide off the road, often due to poor tyres. To address this, Roadguard and inventors Wilhelm Stang and Josef Ellingsen have been granted a patent for a system that measures the tread depth of car tyres as they drive over an embedded unit.

A core challenge was protecting precise measuring equipment—sensitive to tenths of a millimeter—from harsh environments involving snow, rain, dust, and vibrations from high-speed vehicles. After testing multiple solutions, the team developed a constant airflow system that keeps the equipment clean and operational without requiring moving mechanical parts or frequent, disruptive maintenance on busy highways.

The development journey involved extensive real-world testing and collaboration with research institutions like IFE and SINTEF. Elen Brendeford, Senior Engineer at the Norwegian Industrial Property Office, emphasized the importance of securing intellectual property for robust technical solutions that demand rigorous research and development.

With units already operating continuously at the Svinesund border crossing—scanning around 1,600 trucks daily—Roadguard recently signed a commercial agreement with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration to begin rolling the system out across Norway.

Beyond enforcement, the technology offers significant secondary applications. The data can aid logistics companies in fleet management, assist insurers with premium calculations, and—crucially—provide researchers with accurate, real-world data on microplastic emissions from tyre wear.