Engineering giant Bosch is turning to Cambridge-based startup Fetch.ai for innovative “AIoT” trials.
Fetch.ai is a blockchain (or distributed ledger, if you prefer) that is aiming to build a decentralised network of autonomous “agents” that perform real-world tasks. For the IoT, it’s potentially groundbreaking.
Bosch also seems to believe in Fetch.ai’s vision and has been an early supporter of the startup from almost the beginning. This week, Bosch’s team from its Economy of Things (EoT) project took its support one step further and launched machine learning trials on the Fetch.ai Collective Learning network.
By combining AI and blockchain technologies via Fetch.ai’s network, Bosch expects to be able to predict potential failures of its machinery while retaining data privacy.
Dr Alexander Poddey, Lead Researcher for Digital Socio-Economy, Cryptology, and AI in the EoT project, said:
“Secure and trustworthy computation across several participants, while keeping the raw data and possibly even the learned model private is key to unlock the true value of distributed data.
In our view, collective learning is a key enabler to leading digital socio-economy to efficiency.”
Predictive maintenance, as you’ll know dear reader, is one of the most exciting industrial benefits of the IoT—helping to improve safety and minimise the costs of downtime or more extensive repairs. However, it’s not a simple task.
Jonathan Ward, CTO of Fetch.ai, commented:
“Using machine learning to identify equipment failures is a difficult problem to solve as these events occur very infrequently.
The collective learning system enables the different manufactures that use Bosch’s equipment to share information with each other without sharing the raw data, thereby greatly improving their ability to detect failures, and thus improve the efficiency of their operations.”
Trust is at the heart of blockchains. Combine them with other technologies like AI and the IoT like Fetch.ai and Bosch are doing and you have a powerful solution to some historically difficult problems.
(Image Credit: Bosch)
Want to find out more from executives and thought leaders in this space? Find out more about the Digital Twin World event, taking place on 8-9 September 2021, which will explore augmenting business outcomes in more depth and the industries that will benefit.
