Abstract: An apparatus is capable of determining inflation pressure of a pneumatic tire mounted on the wheel of a vehicle, the tire being in contact with a support over a contact area. The apparatus comprises: (i) sensing means comprising one or more sensors within said support, each sensor being adapted to measure the average contact pressure over the sensor between said tire and said support, and each having a surface area less than the said contact area; and (ii) processing means adapted to determine an average contact pressure between said tire and said support from an output of only a sensor or sensors which fall entirely within said contact area so as to provide a measure of the inflation pressure of the tire to a first order of accuracy. A corresponding method is also disclosed.

Abstract: A system of controlling performance in an interactive voice response system includes a voice device driver, a voice segment stored in a file in a directory in a standard operating system format; a buffer for storing the voice segment prior to sending to the voice device driver and a plurality of voice channels for output of the voice segment. A sequence of voice blocks is requested to be sent to a buffer, the sequence being one of a plurality of sequences making up a voice segment. The number of voice blocks sent from the file to the buffer is determined. The play period of the sequence and the next underrun time when the sequence will finish playing based on the initiate request time and the play period are calculated. Also calculated is the margin period between the calculated next underrun time and the actual time after a further sequence of voice data blocks is sent to the buffer in response to a device driver request for a further sequence of voice data blocks.