Volkswagen has gotten a patent allowing vehicles to communicate with each other by a blockchain-based network aimed to help increase road safety by warning of nearby vehicles and alerting the motorist to potential collisions.
The system might be used to negotiate actions like merging lanes, overtaking, along with a number of other high-risk activities on the move.
“In Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication messages are exchanged between vehicles to help novel safety-relevant use cases. Almost all the currently known use cases provide warnings to alert an individual about an imminent event, similar to two vehicles colliding against each other,” read an excerpt within the patent. “To this end, Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication is dependent on single messages, that are signed by way of sending vehicle. The signature provides integrity and non-repudiation. A great all-natural extension to safety warnings are cooperative manoeuvres, which enable increasing both safety and efficiency of road usage.”
The patent manages self-driven and manually-driven cars and aims with the idea to display information for a driver to discover or simply inform self-driving cars on their next move. A cooperative inter-driver contract is described which will allow drivers to get in agreements aimed to help increase their road safety.
“Cooperative manoeuvres could be in a variety ways. One efficient tactic is for two vehicles to negotiate a contract. Once this contract is finished, the manoeuvres with the negotiated contract are executed. In case a demand for a change of plans arises, this modification needs to be prearranged as well.”
The crux?on the patent would be the concept of exchanging inter-vehicular messages that happens to be cryptographically signed and help to create a network of nearby cars as a way to better avoid collisions and work with the flow of traffic.
The patent explains that messages are first exchanged between one vehicle and yet another, with each message containing a “hash pointer” which indicates where relevant details is stored in a blockchain. After the messages happen to be exchanged the pointer in the last in the messages is signed by each participant and published for the blockchain. If the resulting contract is to be changed, an additional message is added as well as process continues.
Volkswagen may be the latest major company you will be eligible a blockchain patent to raise their business, withWalmart patenting a system for accessing medical records in a blockchain with other blockchain patents?under review and Mastercard patenting anonymous blockchain transactions.? and Samsung seeking blockchain patents to better their logistics and operational efficiency.
Ford Motors in addition has patented a cryptocurrency-fuelled vehicle technology counting in preferential lane access throughout the road among other functions, with cryptocurrency exchange as a feature of your system. It is possible that the Volkswagen contract system will handle similar negotiations if approved.