Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence for Industrial Automation

By: A. Dahiya

Blockchain technology is growing at a rapid pace every day, and can be incorporated into many frameworks, such as robots with AI services. Drastic changes are being noticed in the technological field due to blockchain, artificial intelligence and robotics. AI has become an increasingly prominent force in robotic solutions in recent years, incorporating flexibility and learning features in previously static applications. This collaboration of blockchain, AI and robotics has a broad range of applications ranging from manufacturing, healthcare, automotive, education, retail to every utility sector.

Figure 1: Advantages of blockchain and AI for industrial automation [1]

Many robotic systems using blockchain technology, primarily in industrial and military ecosystems where blockchain will help to automate processes with the help of smart-contracts, and allow systems to have better protection and more traceable processes. By providing certified knowledge about the whole system, blockchain introduces a way to trust the data, trust other actors, and to carry out internal and external reforms. AI and machine learning also aids robotics by providing thinking capability like humans. Apart from this, AI enabled robots tend to have better dynamic interaction and obstacle avoidance to maintain productivity. Further, robotics is constantly been provided with physical and logical data patterns by AI and machine learning to act proactively. As blockchain technology matures, it can communicate with several other paradigms like AI and robotics in order to deliver enhanced products, efficiency, services, and higher living standards for the society. Figure 1 shows the advantages of blockchain and AI for industries.

The strong combination of robotics and AI or machine learning is standing up to whole new possibilities for industrial automation. Advances in robots, drones, artificial intelligence, and other technologies enable enterprises to inspect a wide variety of assets autonomously. Equipping these instruments with sufficient sensors helps them to monitor power lines, oil and gas plants, pipelines, transport networks, and other structures remotely and securely. Robotics and automation in industries introduce several benefits like improved safety of inspection workers, better data quality, simplify data collection, analysis and sharing, reduced equipment downtime and labour cost, quicker inspection time and many other.

The way we live is definitely going to be disrupted by blockchain, robots, and AI: not just because they can offer too many benefits on their own, but also because we can compound those advantages by integrating them together. The application of these technologies could theoretically be used in real-time, but blockchain technology has to move to quicker consensus mechanisms that enable transactions to be authenticated and incorporated into a blockchain far faster than is currently feasible. The introduction of blockchain to robotics can solve many challenges like security as most of the systems have data integrity and trust issues and blockchain can provide reliable peer to peer communication in a trustless environment. The ability to make distributed decisions is another benefit of this incorporation, because blockchain can guarantee that all participants in a decentralized network will hold the identical copies of the transactions. Blockchain technology can serve as a platform to transfer information between various robots and provide smart-contract coded action triggers, improving the reliability and interconnectivity of the robots.

Swarm robotics is seen as a space in which robotics will benefit from the combination of blockchain and AI. This field is made up of many physical robots working together to execute activities or operations in a “swarm.” In this area, every AI-enabled robot communicates with the surrounding world through pre-defined rules. When these robots are connected, they become robust and highly scalable in their collective actions and interaction capabilities. Despite being so popular in areas like medical transport, entertainment industry and precision farming, security for these applications is constantly a matter of concern. This can be the sector where blockchain leads the solution through its incredible features like advanced encryption techniques i.e. digital signatures, public key cryptography. Although robotics driven by AI has emerged as a leading technology, blockchain empowers robotics with an optimal solution for security. AI induces benefits into blockchain enabled robotics through saving energy, increased scalability, optimizing security and efficiency and meeting talent requirements. On the other hand, blockchain adds benefits to the AI enabled robotics through validating AI decisions, enhancing security and transparency and minimizing catastrophic risks.

Major breakthroughs in technology like blockchain, artificial intelligence, robotics and big data analytics have major influence on robotics. In the field of robotics, the potential of the unified force of blockchain and AI is exciting, but more tests will need to take place in the years to come before we see the full impact. Though all these technologies are in their infancy, still there is a need to explore them as dramatic and transformative benefits can be unleashed through these technologies.

References

  1. Akash Takyar, “Blockchain And AI – Towards The Fourth Industrial Revolution”, Leewayhertz. Link available: https://www.leewayhertz.com/blockchain-and-ai/. Access on 20th sep, 2021.
  2. Babkin, A. V., Burkaltseva, D. D., Betskov, A. V., Kilyaskhanov, H. S., Tyulin, A. S., & Kurianova, I. V. (2018). Automation digitalization blockchain: trends and implementation problemsInternational Journal of Engineering and Technology (UAE)7(3.14 Special Issue 14), 254-260.
  3. Fenwick, M., & Vermeulen, E. P. (2019). Technology and corporate governance: Blockchain, crypto, and artificial intelligenceTex. J. Bus. L.48, 1.
  4. Lopes, V., & Alexandre, L. A. (2018). An overview of blockchain integration with robotics and artificial intelligencearXiv preprint arXiv:1810.00329.

Cite this article:

A. Dahiya (2021), Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence for Industrial Automation, Insights2Techinfo, pp. 1

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