Immutable Autobiography of Smart Cars Leveraging Blockchain Technology

Ferdous, Md Sadek; Chowdhury, Mohammad Jabed Morshed; Biswas, Kamanashis; Chowdhury, Niaz and Muthukkumarasamy, Vallipuram (2020). Immutable Autobiography of Smart Cars Leveraging Blockchain Technology. Knowledge Engineering Review, 35, article no. e3.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269888920000028

Abstract

The popularity of smart cars is increasing around the world as they offer a wide range of services and conveniences. These smart cars are equipped with a variety of sensors generating a large amount of data, many of which are critical. Besides, there are multiple parties involved in the lifespan of a smart car, such as manufacturers, car owners, government agencies, and third-party service providers who also generate data about the vehicle. In addition to managing and sharing data amongst these entities in a secure and privacy-friendly way which is a great challenge itself, there exists a trust deficit about some types of data as they remain under the custody of the car owner (e.g. satellite navigation and mileage data) and can easily be manipulated. In this paper, we propose a blockchain assisted architecture enabling the owner of a smart car to create an immutable record of every data, called the autobiography of a car, generated within its lifespan. We also explain how the trust about this record is guaranteed by the immutability characteristic of the blockchain. Furthermore, the paper describes how the proposed architecture enables a secure and privacy-preserving mechanism for sharing of smart car data among different parties.