Robonomics Network by Airalab, which raised $1 million of investment, aims to create smart cities and solve environmental issues on a global scale.
Russian scientists and engineers from Airalab have created a new platform for integrating robots into mass production and day-to-day life. Robonomics Network, built on Ethereum, allows you to purchase goods and services directly from autonomous robots and robotics factories.
Robonomics developers define the project as an
“Ethereum infrastructure for cyber-physical systems' integration into Smart Cities and Industry 4.0”.
Simply put, this is a toolkit for developers, enabling them to organize the cooperation of autonomous robots that fulfill an order received directly from a human user. This could be food delivery to a smart kitchen with the help of drones, or collecting information about air pollution using sensors.
Why Ethereum?
The advantage of Ethereum contracts is the function which allows you to add technical details to financial transactions, as well as the possibility to issue just one “consumer → robot” transaction, instead of two: “consumer → operator” and “operator → robot”.
In other words, the transaction between customer and contractor takes place without any intermediary, be it a person or an IoT-platform.
How it works?
In addition to the executor (cyber-physical system, CPS) and the customer, the system includes an observation network and so-called lighthouses. The function of lighthouses is to find the correspondent supply and demand, send a transaction to create a contract liability, and then, after the CPS has completed the task, place the transaction in the Ethereum blockchain, thereby finalizing the contract. As a result of this finalization, the lighthouses and the observing network receive their rewards.
Bounty for miners
In June 2018, the alpha version of Robonomics smart contract infrastructure was launched on the Ethereum mainnet. Any holder of ETH can test the XRT token emission mechanism, which enables decentralized network operation. An instruction manual for creating a lighthouse is available for download on the Robonomics’ website.
The project creators say the tokens mined during the test period are not the original XRT tokens. However, a bounty program that allows XRT alpha to be exchanged into “original” ones, is currently being prepared.
Together with Microsoft
Aside from consumer services, the platform is also applicable to solving global issues. In 2017, on the basis of Robonomics and with the technical participation of Microsoft, the world's first international transaction for the transfer of carbon units through the blockchain took place. According to the Kyoto Protocol, a carbon unit is the equivalent of one tonne of CO2 emitted by enterprises into the atmosphere. These units are traded on exchanges, and their main buyers are energy-generating companies using fossil fuels.
In addition to the joint case study, in 2017 Airalab and Microsoft established an educational project for training in how to make use of the Ethereum network.
Other environmental projects
In the late summer of 2018, Airalab successfully tested an autonomous sensor platform collecting data on water pollution in Tolyatti, a Russian city where the development team is based. The information was collected by a self-managed floating drone and recorded to a public blockchain. The research method proposed by Airalab turned out to be superior in efficiency when compared to those measurements carried out by municipalities which use expensive servicing vessels.
Also in September 2018, it became public knowledge that the administration of Tolyatti was going to use Airalab technology to monitor forest fires and illegal landfill mining and dump digging at city landfill sites.
Investments
In May 2017, Airalab completed the first round of their ICO, with a total investment of 5,000 ETH (~$820,000). In less than three days, 95 different investors showed their belief in the project, purchasing 600,000 tokens between them.
On the eve of the ICO, the Airalab team received $220,000 from the Satoshi Fund. Cybernator, the company's pre-seed fund, acquired 165,000 AIRA tokens for 1,100 ETH.
Find out more
More detailed descriptions of how Robonomics works, in addition to the White Paper and links to the company blogs can be found at robonomics.network/en/
Useful information for developers is also stored on Github: github.com/airalab
