Case Study — Machine Witness
Bringing cars into the Internet of Things
In 2019, as part of the The Trusted IoT Alliance (TIoTA)'s Smart E-Mobility Challenge, Streamr partnered with Bosch Software Innovations and Riddle & Code, on a pilot project that gathered a range of electric vehicle data and shared it openly in real-time.
Despite millions of cars on our roads, detailed information from in-vehicle sensors is limited and rarely available in real-time. Most of the easily available sources of real-time road information come from Google, and is thus entirely siloed and centrally controlled. Streamr, Bosch and Riddle & Code trialled an open solution to this problem, and were proud to have won the silver medal at the TIoTA awards for their groundbreaking pilot.
The team connected a prototype Bosch ALEN gateway to a Jaguar I-PACE electric vehicle via its CAN bus. A mobile router added connectivity, and enabled a Streamr node running on a Raspberry Pi to route the realtime data to a product on The Hub. Riddle & Code's hardware wallet could digitally sign the data, providing a unique identity for the vehicle.
The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a network comprising billions of web-enabled devices. Even now, these devices are everyday companions. As a participant in the E-Mobility Challenge of the Trusted IoT Alliance, we are exploring the future potential of blockchain and similar distributed ledger technological approaches for the future of mobility.
With cars providing data about their environment as part of the Internet of Cars, those responsible for maintaining road networks can make better decisions on infrastructure investment, drivers can be better informed on how to avoid accidents and reduce journey times, and that data can be traded by car manufacturers, insurance companies and between other machines to ensure the broadest participation in a genuinely open real-time data economy.
In this use case, aggregated car data can be sold on The Hub. Highway agencies, smart cities, car manufacturers, insurance companies and other drivers could enjoy easy data extraction from car sensors via API feeds. Data buyers can also deploy autonomous economic agents that can subscribe and make decisions in real-time, such as changing speed limits, messaging other drivers or setting up diversions. Cars can also measure valuable data unrelated to driving, such as local pollen levels.
A car can witness all kinds of useful data — traffic bottlenecks, ice, potholes and other hazards. Our collaborators are helping us to share and monetise it — Bosch is getting the sensor data direct from the EV's CAN bus, Streamr then unlocks the value of the data and shares it with the infrastructure powering the road network.
Streamr has a range of solutions for the automotive industry. If you would like to talk to us about how we could help you build something similar, please get in touch.
- Tech stack
- Data Unions
- The Hub
- Streamr Network
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