Decentralized machine autonomy for manufacturing servitization

Pustišek, Matevž (author), Chen, Min (author), Kos, Andrej (author), Kos, Anton (author)

Blockchain ecosystems are rapidly maturing and meeting the needs of business environments (e.g., industry, manufacturing, and robotics). The decentralized approaches in industries enable novel business concepts, such as machine autonomy and servitization of manufacturing environments. Introducing the distributed ledger technology principles into the machine sharing and servitization economy faces several challenges, and the integration opens new interesting research questions. Our research focuses on data and event models and secure upgradeable smart contract platforms for machine servitization. Our research indicates that with the proposed approaches, we can efficiently separate on- and off-chain data and assure scalability of the DApp without compromising the trust. We demonstrate that the secure upgradeable smart contract platform, which was adapted for machine servitization, supports the business workflow and, at the same time, assures common identification and authorization of all the participants in the system, including people, devices, and legal entities. We present a hybrid decentralized application (DApp) for the servitization of 3D printing. The solution can be used for or easily adapted to other manufacturing domains. It comprises a modular, upgradeable smart contract platform and off-chain machine, customer and web management, and monitoring interfaces. We pay special attention to the data and event models during the design, which are fundamental for the hybrid data storage and DApp architecture and the responsiveness of off-chain interfaces. The smart contract platform uses a proxy contract to control the access of smart contracts and role-based access control in function calls for blockchain users. We deploy and evaluate the DApp in a consortium blockchain network for performance and privacy. All the actors in the solution, including the machines, are identified by their blockchain accounts and are compeers. Our solution thus facilitates integration with the traditional information-communication systems in terms of the hybrid architectures and security standards for smart contract design comparable to those in traditional software engineering.

• Language: English
• Keywords: machine autonomy, servitization, use case, decentralized application, smart contract
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 22 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 22, iss. 1, art. 338
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-136754
• UDC: 004
• ISSN on article: 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22010338
• COBISS.SI-ID: 91945219
• Publication date in RUL: 19.05.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Sensors
• Shortened title: Sensors
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 1424-8220
• COBISS.SI-ID: 10176278

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 03.01.2022

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: avtonomija naprav, servitizacija, primeri uporabe, decentralizirane aplikacije, pametne pogodbe