MOBI Grand Challenge tackles urban mobility challenges

MOBI, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, and TIoTA, the Trusted IoT Alliance, have announced the MOBI Grand Challenge (MGC), a four-month tournament showcasing potential uses of blockchain in coordinating vehicle movement and improving urban transportation.

Participants will be expected to demonstrate how distributed consensus, blockchain and related technologies can coordinate to solve specific problems in urban mobility, including machine identity, position, collective sensor fusion, obstacle mapping, path planning, and micropayments. The challenge will run from 12^thOctober through to 14^thJanuary.

Behind the initiative are such industry partners as Accenture, BMW, IBM, Ocean Protocol and Beyond Protocol, a distributed ledger technology (DLT) company building a new internet protocol that securely connects devices with a universal language.

Big bucks

Ocean Protocol has committed one million dollars’ worth of token prize to the three-year Challenge series. Beyond Protocol is stumping up $250,000 worth of tokens to be used on its network.

“Today, many pieces of the smart mobility future are already in place and there are no fundamental roadblocks to realising the full benefits of blockchain connected vehicles,” says MOBI’s CEO and Co-founder Chris Ballinger. “Through the MGC, MOBI and TIoTA aim to spark corporate, government and academic cooperation, connect developers with key stakeholders to drive progress, and fully exploit the potential of blockchain technology.”

“Mobility is a breakout IoT industry vertical for blockchain,” adds Zaki Manian, Executive Director of the Trusted IoT Alliance and a member of MOBI’s Board of Advisors. “Only a small percentage of companies have completed end-to-end proof of concepts in this area and our intent is to fill this gap. With this collaboration, we will further the viability of applications of blockchain for smart contract enabled IoT devices.”

MOBI and TIoTA are currently collaborating on two use cases: Roadside Infrastructure & Autonomous Vehicles and Supply Chain. For the MGC, TIoTA will support participants in building out and testing automotive and mobility solutions on the open TIoTA Testnet.

Winners of the first Challenge will receive $350,000 worth of awards in several categories, including:

• $250,000 worth of tokens awarded by Beyond Protocol, to be used on the Beyond Protocol network
• $100,000 worth of  tokens awarded by Ocean Protocol, to be used on the Ocean Protocol network for data exchange and AI advances.

“Through our participation in MOBI and the MOBI Grand Challenge, we are empowering its members and the next generation of blockchain technologists to build the architecture in an open fashion,” says Jonathan Manzi, Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Protocol. “Distributed ledger technology allows for the transparent consensus and collaboration of all the vehicles on the road, supporting our belief in an efficient autonomous future.”

“We are proud to partner MOBI and sponsor the three-year series of challenges as we believe in an autonomous future,” comments Daryl Arnold, Co-founder of Ocean Protocol.  “In order for autonomous vehicles to thrive, access is required to a vast and diverse ecosystem of data assets and services much of which today is locked up in silos. Through blockchain technology, Ocean provides an infrastructure for data providers and related services to build on, enabling data to be shared and traded in a trusted, secure and transparent manner, while retaining privacy rights. Our mission is to unlock data, particularly for AI, and build a new data economy.”

Learnings from the first tournament will be used to create the next series of the challenge.  The ultimate goal of the MGC is to develop the first viable decentralised, ad hoc, network of blockchain connected vehicles and infrastructure that can reliably share data, coordinate behaviour, and improve urban mobility. Winners from the first challenge will be chosen and announced at a collaborative and public event hosted by the BMW Group in Munich, Germany.