Like, many other industries, the automotive industry is applying the innovations of digitalization into the sector, i.e., the Internet of Things. But we must remember that the transport industry has been one of the digital pioneers, going as far back as the DAIR (Driver Aid, Information & Routing) system in the late-1960s by GM and some decades later its OnStar. In the case of DAIR, the cost implications made the project non-viable because it needed to add the technology to the vehicle and the roadworks.
Today these problems have been resolved, and we have entered the past years, a future where connectivity and vehicles go hand in hand. A change in the industry is creating new consumer needs, stakeholders, and services, forcing traditional car manufacturers to service digitalization as an essential service in their products. The opportunities constantly brought into the transport market are endless, and the potential benefits coming with these are amazing.
But there is one problem slowing down the adoption of IoT devices deployment into the transportation industry. Security and privacy are hindering the use of IoT technology due to the capacity of cybercriminals to access these devices and take control of them. A significant problem with catastrophic consequences that can not be permitted in this industry vertical, in this sense, one of the most logical and efficient solutions is the transformation of the digital infrastructure from centralized to decentralized solutions.
Before continuing with the decentralization solution, let’s understand the implications of the lack of sufficient security and privacy inside the automobile industry. The upcoming services being researched and developed (R&D) imply autonomous driving for business and private consumers. A massive step toward road management that can become exponentially safer, more efficient, and more sustainable.
Within IoT technologies, the automotive industry is actioning innovative and advanced solutions that include:
- Connected car solutions.
- Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS).
- In-vehicle infotainment systems.
- Navigation & telematics solutions.
- Predictive maintenance solutions.
- Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) applications.
- Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) applications.
- Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communication applications.
Looking at the practicality of these innovations surrounding the transportation industry and their potential advantages, we’ll analyze some.
Aggregating IoT technology into the automotive industry allows action fleet and driver management. Use of the technology to input various vital information to help the business and drivers, resulting in more efficient and secure paths. Vehicle tracking triggers an array of data to actuate on monitoring fuel utilization and sharing stats about drivers’ health and performance.
Other performances that can take advantage of IoT deployment are sending idle alerts for preventive maintenance and integrating a solution to service condition monitoring. All this can come through reliable connectivity to cellular networks (2G, 3G, 4G/LTE, and 5G), giving IoT sensors embedded in vehicles the opportunity to send signals and trigger warning alerts for:
-> Low battery.
-> Coolant temperature.
-> Engine maintenance.
These improvements in the whole transportation system are significant, producing better working conditions, cost efficiency by predictive vehicle failures, and better customer service. But as mentioned, if cyber criminals access these services, the consequences can be life-threatening, and the economic loss counted in millions of dollars. Decentralization architecture implemented in the industry can eliminate these threats and vulnerabilities.
The incredible power of IoT devices deployed in the transportation industry allows for real-time vehicle telematics. Actioning the monitoring of a vehicle’s location, movement, status, and behavior within a fleet. Translating into advantages that include:
· Remote:
1. Access to the vehicle operational information.
2. Vehicle speed limit controls.
· Quantum-Safe — Another important hindsight security issue is tackled by using perfect random number series, it encrypts the communications data that will be secured from future Quantum Computer-Enhanced encryption-cracking efforts.
· Turn-by-turn navigation with augmented 3rd-party information.
· Vehicle collision notifications to third parties, and emergency responders.
Again, these benefits can bring a holistic approach to the transport cycle, keeping workers and roads safer, and potentially do the opposite if bad actors can hack the system. An issue hindering the evolution of this technology can be mitigated with decentralized architectures.
Innovations coming to place are the Internet of Everything for vehicles, encompassing the whole interconnection. A system that does not only aggregate device-to-device but also adds the people, process, and data to the equation. There are two modes of operation with C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle to Everything) to this holistic approach — device-to-device and device-to-network.
The device-to-device communications permits vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P). Applying IoE to the transportation industry connects roadways through innovations like:
· Collision avoidance.
· Share speed data.
· Location and route via a single network
· Alert drivers about traffic signal priority/timing.
· Safety alerts to pedestrians and cyclists.
In the case of device-to-network, it supports vehicle-to-network (V2N) communication via cellular networks, allowing cloud services to include in these end-to-end solutions and real-time traffic reporting and routing. But it has to be informed that IoE innovations through centralized service providers (cloud services) are vulnerable to cybercriminals and can’t assure 24/7 real-time inputs.
Combining big data, cloud computing, and edge computing with sensors enables data collation and analytics. This predictive technology based on IoT connectivity tools stores a vehicle’s performance data, processes it and evaluates the risk of malfunction. Then it transmits the data over the cloud and notifies the user, reducing breakdowns and enabling easy maintenance.
This results in major benefits, from the Automotive IoT solutions for predictive maintenance:
· Identify failures before occurring.
· 75% accuracy calculation of remaining part's lifespan.
· Measures performance variables such as:
1. temperature
2. Speed
3. Electrical System
4. Navigation Route
· Decrease operational costs.
· Increase in safety.
This part of the IoT evolution came through due to the exponential rise of smartphones. Giving vehicles the possibility of adding applications by connecting the driver’s phone to stream data to the car via Bluetooth. Some examples of infotainment are Google Maps for navigation, Google Assistant for hands-free driving help, and Apple CarPlay for high-end car infotainment.
Although, this part of the IoT devices deployment seems less dangerous when thinking about security issues and privacy. As they are centralized solutions, they also have the potential to open paths for cybercriminals to take control and create highly threatening situations for the driver and the surrounding environment.
Doing a quick recap of the solutions that IoT technology can implant into the transportation industry, we can see a pattern that creates a conflict. These applications, services, and products run inside centralized solutions that, unfortunately, present real issues that are not being addressed.
Internet of Everything Corp has built an architecture capable of actuating to procure a safe and private network where IoT can perform. A truly decentralized infrastructure, working on a well-designed edge computing platform, actioning privacy and security through a quantum-safe blockchain. Autonomously functioning with Services Manifests that provide the rules and logic to the network to alert and disconnect malfunctions inside the network, thus, mitigating the infection of the whole network.
IoE Corp Eden System also solves the problem of assuring real-time data on a 24/7 basis by working on location and using all the nodes connected like power lines. Therefore, data doesn’t need to travel to centric installations to be stored, processed, analyzed, and sent back. IoE Eden is also driven by AI, providing data refinement, giving the person or machine data to information to act upon and at the time it is needed.
Any device can contribute computing resources over an intelligent mesh network. In this way, computing can happen where needed and close to where it will be used. Creating the Eden System on a decentralized model based on scalable device clustering, it is easy to add new devices as nodes.
The development of quantum-safe tunnels using polymorphic encryption keys using a blockchain with consensus to verify the data moved between the nodes over the tunnels creates trusted walled data gardens. The orchestration of computing and storage is done via service manifests that describe services rules, policies, and logic. An autonomous knowledge-based AI manages the underlying orchestration mechanics using network consensus over the blockchain as a deciding mechanism.
The orchestration dynamically updates the cluster topography to fit the current workload. Eden System depos are generated and deployed similarly to container images; the depos are MPI cluster enabled from the start. Having all these in place ignites the automotive industry, with the following benefits:
· Agile service creation and deployment: The only addition to a normal container deployment is the Service Manifest generation.
· Continuous development, integration, and deployment: Provides for reliable and frequent depo build and deployment with quick and efficient rollbacks (due to depos immutability).
· Dev and Ops separation of concerns: To create service depo’s at build/release time rather than deployment time, thereby decoupling services from infrastructure.
· Observability: Not only cluster information and metrics, but also application health and other signals.
· Environmental consistency across development, testing, and production: It runs the same on a laptop as in the wild.
· Cloud and OS distribution portability: Runs on Linux, BSD, on-premises, on public clouds, and anywhere else.
· Service-centric management: Raises the level of abstraction from running an OS on virtual hardware to running a service on a Decentralized network.
· Loosely coupled, distributed, elastic, independent microservices: Applications are broken into smaller, separate pieces and can be deployed and managed dynamically — not a monolithic stack running on one single-purpose machine.
· Resource isolation: Predictable service performance.
· Resource utilization: High efficiency and density.
The security of our Eden System gives the automotive industry a defense against Distributed Denial of Service attacks. IoE Eden is fully decentralized; thus, DDoS attacks are mitigated because there are no centralized points to takeout. It can also detect Malware trying to replicate itself on other nodes. By verifying data traffic between nodes over a blockchain, malware can be seen and the infected node identified. Another security advantage IoE Eden provides is the bad data and bad player detection using verification and sanity checks on data entering and transported on the Eden System.
You can learn more about our groundbreaking technology by contacting us or reading about our automotive solutions.
