A blockchain, during its lifetime, records large amounts of data, that in a common usage its kept on its entirety. In a robotics environment, the old information is useful for human evaluation, or oracles interfacing with the blockchain but it is not useful for the robots that require only current information in order to continue their work. This causes a storage problem in blockchain nodes that have limited storage capacity, such as in the case of nodes attached to robots that are usually built around embedded solutions. This paper presents a time-segmentation solution for devices with limited storage capacity, integrated in a particular robot-directed blockchain called RobotChain. Results are presented regarding the proposed solution that show that the goal of restricting each node's capacity is reached without compromising all the benefits that arise from the use of blockchains in these contexts, and on the contrary, it allows for cheap nodes to use this blockchain, reduces storage costs and allows faster deployment of new nodes.
Car manufacturers are investing heavily in Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) because of their increasing popularity. AVs employ a combination of high-tech sensors and innovative algorithms to detect and respond to their surroundings, including radar, laser light, GPS, odometer, drive-by-wire control systems, and computer vision. When a user requests for a ride share or rent, the responding AV IoT device does not have the sufficient capability to store, process, or verify each other. Currently, every AV IoT device typically needs to rely on a trusted third party, which invokes another trust issue. If the trusted third party is rogue or loses credibility, the whole system will collapse. This paper introduces Chained of Things Framework and develops a blockchain-based secure ride-sharing service between passengers and autonomous vehicles. We implement an initial prototype and provide our initial results based on a proposed protocol.