The age of autonomous vehicles is upon us, even sooner than many experts predicted. While there’s still a long way to go in terms of full automation, GM has filed a request with the federal government to begin manufacturing cars without steering wheels as soon as 2019. Google’s sister company Waymo has driven millions of miles in Phoenix without the help of drivers.
As we move toward a driverless future over the coming decades, we’ll need a system for identifying, tracking and managing cars that isn’t associated with the driver. While individuals may continue to own cars in the future, the more likely scenario is we’ll transition to a transportation-as-a-service model where an autonomous car picks us up and drops us off at our destination. This means all kinds of challenges for fleet management, route finding, maintenance, reporting, and accounting.
The Identity of Things (IDoT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) based on the blockchain may become a key part of the solution to managing autonomous vehicles.
What is IDoT and What Does It Mean for Autonomous Vehicles?
The Identity of Things is a fairly new concept that’s part of the internet of things revolution. It essentially involves giving things a unique identifier so that they can easily interact with people, other things, and be tracked in real time. When Amazon helps you track your package from shipment to delivery, the barcode on the package is that shipment’s identity. However, as things start to get smarter (e.g. sensors, robots, AI-controlled systems, and autonomous cars), identity becomes even more important.
In the case of autonomous cars, identity will help fleet owners track the location and status of every vehicle in their fleet. More generally, however, an autonomous car needs a unique identity because it will be making decisions and conducting transactions on its own, without the assistance of humans.
Car Identity on the Blockchain
Using the blockchain for identity makes sense because of the blockchain’s high level of security. The blockchain also allows for digital currency and decentralized applications that cars or other things could make use of in the course of executing a customer contract.
A blockchain ledger of car identity could attest for the location of a given car at any time in the past. It could also maintain records of the car’s maintenance, refueling/recharging, passengers the car has carried and so on. This would be valuable to autonomous vehicle owners and fleet managers, but that data could also be leveraged or sold outside of fleet management. Data about seasonality or traffic patterns could prove useful for customers, governments, manufacturers, and developers.
The best way to accelerate the driverless car to full, safe autonomy no matter the location or road conditions is to decentralize the data cars have generated over time. The blockchain makes that possible.
More Than Driving
Autonomy doesn’t have to stop with driving from one location to another. Blockchain identity could allow cars to be autonomous in every sense of the word. Smart contracts could help cars drive to get more fuel or recharge without being told. Or, the car could visit the mechanic on its own, record the maintenance on its decentralized maintenance record, and pay for all these services itself using digital currency.
In a case like this, fleet management companies themselves may become obsolete. A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) built on the blockchain could manage a fleet of independent cars. The overhead from traditional companies would be passed back to the consumer in the form of lower transportation costs.
Porsche & Volkswagen Leading the Way
Porsche is already experimenting with blockchain for security purposes. They’ve found that verifying your identity and unlocking your car’s doors could be done up to six times faster with blockchain than by querying a centralized server. This same verifying technology could grant limited driving permissions to a valet, mechanic, or your teenager. This could all be managed via a customizable Ethereum smart contract. Porsche also plans to explore sharing car data with other cars on the road, improving the safety of the autonomous experience.
Volkswagen has teamed up with IOTA to implement distributed ledger technology in its vehicles as well. Although the details of the partnership are vague, decentralized, transparent information on how the car is performing and its components could help VW rebuild trust with American consumers in the wake of its emissions scandal.
Toyota Sharing Data to Bring Autonomy Faster
The idea of pooling data in order to make autonomous vehicles safer is a major application for blockchain. Toyota is teaming up with MIT to explore the options for identity and data sharing in autonomous cars. Toyota research institute’s Chris Ballinger has said,
Hundreds of billions of miles of human driving data may be needed to develop safe and reliable autonomous vehicles. Blockchains and distributed ledgers may enable pooling data from vehicle owners, fleet managers, and manufacturers to shorten the time for reaching this goal, thereby bringing forward the safety, efficiency and convenience benefits of autonomous driving technology.
The Toyota research institute’s focus is on sharing data from trips that autonomous vehicles take. Blockchain technology will play a key role in managing identity and securing that data as more autonomous vehicles enter the roads.
But that’s not all the research will investigate. They’re also interested in route finding solutions to make ride-sharing easier for consumers. Additionally, Toyota will investigate new smart contracts-based insurance products that don’t insure on a monthly basis but provide coverage by the minute or by the trip depending on the needs of the customer.
Autonomous Cars & Blockchain Cybersecurity
Cars are now highly connected devices and the trend will only continue to accelerate with the advent of autonomous vehicles on the roads. By 2020, all new cars will have an IP address and an internet connection. Autonomy will only add to the connectivity, as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication becomes increasingly necessary.
Each of these communication channels is vulnerable to attack, and a hacker gaining control over a fully autonomous vehicle is a dangerous situation. Creating communication protocols that depend on decentralized ledgers and even tokenized messaging using the blockchain could prove vital to ensuring the security of a driverless world.
