The primary objective of this future vision is to act as an entry point for newcomers, whilst giving a deeper insight into IOTA; the concepts that it has been built around and a future that could be achieved by utilising it as part of the Internet of Everything (IoE). It should be emphasised that everyone should carry out their own research and due diligence.
After mumbling snooze a few too many times to the phone alarm, he told the alarm to disable itself. Wandering though to the kitchen, the fridge welcomed him with a warm looking picture of toast and coffee. The kettle had just finished boiling, good timing as always. He put some bread in the toaster and opened the fridge to get the butter and milk, there was very little left apart from that; the smart fridge was part of the Internet Of Things (IoT) and knew he was travelling today, so had optimised the shelf stock over the last week using machine learning. Instead of the meaningless, energy wasting puzzles that blockchain miners used to do, things had thankfully moved on and useful outsourced computations were now being carried out instead, most of the old blockchain based technology no longer existed after the advent of powerful quantum computing, however IOTA was quantum resistant and withstood the test of time.
He scanned the milk on the fridge panel, it displayed where it had originated from; the journey the milk had been on until it reached the shop and that it was from an A grade smart farm. The display also showed some of the other metrics that farmers and inspectors could access such as; stress levels, location, blood pressure, standing time, eating time, interaction with other animals, supplements that were being given, milk output and so on and so forth. This was enabled by using IOTA, it was a nice touch and gave him confidence in the product. Boutique shops had even started selling milk where the individual cow could be identified (rather than pasteurising in a batch) where it would show a picture of the cow, its name and how old it was.
While waiting for the toast, the fridge hummed a note and asked if he would like to sell the last month’s food consumption data on the data marketplace, in return he could get an optimised CognIOTA replenishment recommendation, “Confirm and place the order when my return flight departs” he replied; he knew that the data being sent wouldn’t include his personal details and the recommendations had been getting consistently better in selection, price and quality, it would even use his own car to pick the shopping up. His toast popped up, almost perfectly finished even though it was a different type of bread than he normally toasted; his toaster received access to the bread related purchases he made through a smart contract. When he made a food purchase in store, he had chosen to automatically purchase the related product information which would get sent to his account, right down to the expiry information which was now using colour coded variables based on the storage conditions they were exposed to; rather than the static expiration dates of the past, this considerably helped to prevent wastage; he couldn’t remember clearly but maybe this was one of the projects assisted by the IOTA ecosystem development fund. He even noticed that different freshness would have a different toasting time; the toaster took that into account and had matched up his “toastiness” preference, downloading the optimal settings on the marketplace. It wasn’t that smart though, if he bought multiple types of bread at once then it often made him select which type it was; or made an average decision if he didn’t select any. He thought that the toaster was a bit feature-rich, but it was about the same cost as a more traditional one and gave way better results.
After breakfast, he finished packing his suitcases, used a contactless palm vein scanner to verify his TangleID and access his autonomous car; he asked the car to change the ambiance to something refreshing and to also put the news on screen, sitting back while it started the journey to the airport. One of the news clips caught his attention regarding the science education budget, he asked the car for options on delegating his vote, a few new options came up; ideology based or meritocracy based matching; he chose ideology and very much agreed with the list, selecting “professor X” to have his delegated vote. It then came up with a sub menu that professor X had created; which asked for his personal feedback on three topics that he would like a future generation to learn about, he chose special relativity, quantum electrodynamics and artificial intelligence from a long list. He confirmed his identity again in car using another palm vein scanner; he felt like he was actually making a difference when it came to vote as part of a Liquid Democracy and was glad it had found a foothold after witnessing so many absurd political debacles in the past.
He had previously signed up to liquid democracy for AI as well, which was just getting past the experimental stage; it was giving AI an ethical framework based on human decisions, such as the trolley problem. His feedback was then submitted to a Qubic which would work out global, regional and local consensus. Instead of the AI making their “own” decision on these matters; if it ever came up with an ethical dilemma that had a confirmed human consensus found, it would use that instead of making its own decision. All data of the car would be stored permanently and securely on the tangle for complete reference if there were any issues.
He quickly checked his social media account on the screen, he had opted to keep his personal details private and that there would be no advertisements shown. To have that level of privacy and unobtrusiveness, he paid feeless IOTA micropayments on a “pay as you go” basis to access the content.
Approaching the airport, he noticed the car no longer needed to slow down to pay for the toll booth — they must have finally upgraded to Li-Fi, his car lights came with that as standard and he had long ago accepted reasonable travel charges on his cars IOTA wallet via a smart contract.
As the car rolled up to the drop off point, he quickly set the car to service mode where it would do shopping / pizza delivery / emergency charging and would even act as an oracle in some instances while he was away to earn IOTA. His car currently had a battery pack trailer pod attached which was also known as an AMPD “autonomous mobile power distributor”, it could charge vehicles (and be charged) through the tow bar. The car’s retractable tow bar had three purposes, towing; charging and replacing batteries. The towbar could easily plug into stationary (outdoor) charging points after being lined up without having to lift a finger; overhead (indoor) drop down power points were also common in most parking garages. The towbar could also be used to extract the car battery (after disengaging the safety catch), some of the larger AMPD models were able to both remove and insert a new battery this way. The AMPD was self-owned and rewarded him with IOTA for its transportation; and for charging it up when at home, it also had solar panels attached and fed any excess energy back to the car when driving, it was very helpful for alleviating Range Anxiety. As the AMPD was self-owned, its decisions were Qubic based, such as; if a request for energy was made by another car or a shopping mall etc. then the AMPD could confirm a potential drop off location with the car it was connected to and submit a bid to the qubic with its available energy. A qubic would then select the optimal bid and the winner would be awarded a smart contract, the AMPD would then be dropped off in a suitable location, the AMPD could then drive itself autonomously on the “last mile” or submit a bid request to another car that was going that direction, when it reached the destination it would automatically hook up to the car or terminal that had requested it; where it would then be paid in micropayments via a flash stream for the energy it provided. After carrying out the agreed charge, the AMPD would then await the next instruction from the Qubic AI that overseen the fleet, such as; chain up to other AMPD units, stay in the same location and wait for off-peak electricity so that it could charge itself back up, go out in the sun and charge by its solar panels, or to hook onto another vehicle and travel elsewhere (even to off-grid solar farms for example). Any excess IOTA that the AMPD made was then mainly put towards a basic universal income for the country, a smaller portion of it was given to good causes and disbursed based on Liquid Democracy.
After getting into the airport, he went up to a display which showed two options to print; a permanent luggage tag or a name tag. Temporary baggage labels had long been made obsolete, the permanent tag could be left on the bag regardless of who was travelling, the name tag was for his personal benefit when collecting it and could be switched out depending who was travelling. As he had recently bought a new suitcase he needed to print both, his other suitcase already had details on it. So that his other family members could use the same tag if needed, he only typed in his last name when prompted. The luggage tag printed out a uniquely random QR code with an embedded RFID that had matching information on it; the QR code was using high level error correction, the name tag printed separately and was simply a text printout with his last name. He placed them on the bag as recommended; his bag came with pockets on the front for them. He then went over to the self-service baggage drop off area and verified his identity with a palm vein scanner and confirmed his destination and that his identity and flight information could be passed on to all relevant airports. He put the first bag on and it went on its way, he placed the next bag on the conveyor; it was slightly overweight so he confirmed the extra charge could be taken from his account by a smart contract and it went on its way. In the background the system had carried out a check that the QR and RFID information was identical and that the code was unique in the list of active “in transit” bags on the tangle database. As he had just provided his identity when dropping the bags off, it matched the unique code against his ID, the airports would subsequently be able to recognise that the suitcases were his, and where he was going. Restricted MAM channels (with his identity stored in a salt hash) had just been created on the tangle to provide updates on each suitcase location throughout the trip, they were running a smart contract which would link the MAM stream to his tangleID incase he ever needed to check the location of the bags.
Going through security he used another palm vein scanner; he hadn’t required to use a ticket or even his passport for a few years now (though it was still advised to carry when travelling internationally); he only had to verify his identity a few times via palm vein scanner and confirm his destination once for the trip. Upon going through security, his gate and seat information were sent to his phone via a smart contract beacon (a smart contract had to be agreed by the phone and the beacon before it could send information; so as to prevent advertisements and spam, this was generally managed by Qubic consensus of IDoT devices).
Over the tannoy there was an announcement that his flight would be delayed for 2 hours due to an unforeseen issue, they were currently printing out a replacement part and would be fitting it soon, he received a notification on his phone with the same details.
Eventually he received another beacon notification on his phone detailing that he should start making his way to the departure area (based on his distance away from it, and his average walking speed). In the departure lounge there were some glass lockers with various in-transit equipment that could be rented out, he used his phone to pay the deposit and confirm funds so that he could use one of the VR headsets that came with a set of noise cancelling headphones. The locker popped open, he unplugged the case ready to take with him on the flight. It was quite light and compact as the VR and noise cancelling technology used outsourced computing and LiFi, it only needed enough battery for the microphone, speaker, screen and JINN chip rather than the backpacks of the past.
After boarding the plane and settling down, he watched a short video by the plane manufacturer which detailed how digital twins are handled through IOTA for all critical equipment and tools (criticality was split into; safety, environment and asset). The digital twins were a detailed digital representation of the physical objects, tracking everything such as where the raw material was sourced, the parameters it was exposed to when the equipment was being assembled and installed, the temperature / vibration / running hours as well. The video showed a torque wrench being located in a busy workshop through a LiFi VLC (visible light communication) positioning system which was accurate down to around 4cm and then being collected by a robot and taken to an engineer. The torque wrench was then used to tighten the bolts on an engine, torque readings for each bolt location; along with a snapshot of the torque wrenches digital twin information at the point of use such as its last calibration date etc, were then communicated to the tangle to further build the engines digital twin. When the next service would be carried out on the engine, a comparison between torque readings would be made to see if there were any abnormal discrepancies, and further analysis carried out and predictive maintenance scheduled if required. When the engine was fitted to the plane, the engines digital twin information would then link with the planes digital twin, as a child component in the hierarchy.
Even the black box on the plane had become digitalised and the details tracked through the tangle, allowing secure, tamperproof, audit trails and clear data ownership. With the digital twins, it was found that predictive maintenance through Machine Learning and AI could encompass or replace a lot of preventive and corrective maintenance; the data could even be sold on data marketplaces to improve predictive maintenance across different companies and even different manufacturers which previously had their data siloed. The ERP was configured so that available spare parts could be located in other companies for lease/returns etc; all through smart contracts signed at the time, the companies own stock availability was also optimised through predictively planned maintenance; relocating parts wherever deemed necessary, it also took into consideration which parts could be 3d printed. Most sites now had the capabilities to 3d print titanium parts and tools using an “everything as a service” business model; shared by multiple companies on site, the printing data was provided through an IOTA data marketplace and the 3d printer was running on a ROS (Robot operating system) which interfaced with the Abra programming language. Trials were also being carried out on 4d printing of ceramics.
An interesting fact that came up was that as LiFi could not travel through walls, and was in the visible spectrum, the cockpit’s data was secure from the rest of the passengers and did not cause any electromagnetic interference so it could be left on at all times throughout the trip. The plane would also utilise fog / edge / mist computation via LiFi.
Another clip showed how the headphones he rented was utilising the aircraft's in-flight noise cancellation technology, this was achieved by having IoT sensors on every window, chair and connected headphone that could send noise information securely through the Tangle LiFi to find how noise was travelling throughout the aircraft. A custom tailored “anti-noise” was then calculated for his specific location. When the expected noise reached the headsets microphone, then the “anti-noise” would start playing. It worked great for both the aircraft noise and screaming babies a few seats away.
As the flight reached the Taipei geofence, he received a notification that he may want to consider moving funds to the Taipei cluster and book travel insurance; the phones time zone would also be updated. he confirmed all and moved enough IOTA for the duration of the trip.
On landing, he dropped off the VR headset and headphones; plugging the case back into locker to re-charge the battery. It confirmed that his deposit would be refunded, and he would only be charged for the time that it was in use plus a small cleaning cost. The devices were being tracked by Identity of Things (IDoT) and would have the cleaning recorded and any predictive maintenance servicing scheduled.
He received another notification from his IOTA Trinity wallet, due to the 2 hour flight delay he had been automatically partially refunded for the inconvenience.
When approaching the baggage collection area, he received a smart contract beacon notification that allowed him to quickly open the tracking mode on his phone so he could see where the suitcases were, and which belt they would come out on; with an estimated time of arrival (based on machine learning of historical data), his phone buzzed as each suitcase came out. As he was a bit later than expected he decided it was best to go directly to a hotel, using CognIOTA he quickly booked an autonomous vehicle for pickup and a hotel to stay in.
On the way to the hotel, the autonomous car that he was travelling in joined a platoon where there were autonomous trucks without any cabs at the front; the dashboard in the car showed that they connected via the LiFi on headlights / rear lights and there was micropayments streaming via a flash channel from the car to the truck, with some discount due as the AV was providing some outsourced computing power via a JINN chip. There was even a notice that showed the insurance policy automatically change from “AV with passenger” to “AV with passenger in A+ Platoon”. He changed the display screen and it showed a live map of air and noise pollution monitoring in the city including the cars readings; it was a very clean, smart city .
Some of the roads didn’t even have traffic lights let alone road markings and sign posts, certain routes mandated that only autonomous vehicles with the latest AI software and up to date ethical frameworks were allowed to travel on them. The checking of the latest software and over the air (OTA) updates were carried out securely via Qubic and smart contracts. The city traffic was completely interconnected by using LiFi connected street lighting, with any accidents on the road getting flagged up almost instantly and re-routing being automatically carried out with great optimisation; the car even had a live visualisation of the city showing different colours where there were incidents or traffic congestion.
Upon reaching the hotel, he took out his bags; the AV had already charged him for every mile travelled and gave him an A+ passenger rating, his Cogniota account would automatically sell the travel data on the marketplace for a micropayment; he had previously chosen to automatically allow this as he knew it would help to keep services competitive, while also keeping his personal data private. An automated trolley was waiting outside, which he placed his bags on and used a palm vein scanner so that it could find his room; which it displayed on a panel with an option to register more guest ID’s. He followed the trolley into the lift and then over to the door where he did another identity scan; the door opened and the trolley then placed the suitcases in the room and left.
As a final thought, he remembered to reactivate his phones alarm and set it to a new time in the morning; the voice recognition easily understanding his accent due to Qubic based machine learning.
