IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018 - 75

coverage at/in a given time/place) or change the status of the
make a transfer from his or her wallet to the smart contract to
coverage manually. To deal with conflicts between automatic
provide funds for the policy. In the prototype created, Ethers,
and manual modification, when the customer triggers a new
i.e., the cryptocurrencies of the Ethereum blockchain, are used.
manual modification of a coverage, the previously defined
The smart contract stores the sender's address to eventually
automatic modification is discarded (and vice versa, letting
transfer the money to him or her. The customer's data and other
recent modifications prevail over older ones).
information, such as the address of the newly created smart
contract, are stored in a database. In this
phase, a portable electronic device is
assigned to the customer to be installed
on the customer's vehicle. This device
<>
Provide
acts as a server and forwards any cusPersonal
tomer requests (e.g., activation/deactivaUndersign
Data
Send
tion of coverage) to the blockchain.
a Policy
Ethers to
Hence, the device is provided with a
Contract
wallet, which is used to sign transactions
<>
sent to the smart contract. It can also act
View
Activate
on its own, e.g., based on data collected
Passenger
the
by embedded sensors, and trigger transCoverage State
Contract
actions autonomously.
View
The customer can interact with the
Theft Coverage
State
electronic device by using the mobile
View
View
app. The device is connected to the
Fire Coverage
Insurance
State
Internet network through a mobile subCoverage's
View
scriber identification module (SIM).
State
Weather
Phone companies do not provide public
Coverage
Choose
Internet protocol addresses (which are
State
Passenger
needed to let the device receive requests
Number
Modify
by external applications). Therefore, a
<>
Passenger's
reverse secure shell (SSH) tunneling
Coverage
has been created between the electronic
Select
Customer
<>
Area for
device and a specific port of a dedicatAutomatic
ed server, allowing incoming data to a
Modify
Modify
Activation
Coverage
Theft
server's port to be automatically rediCoverage
rected in a secure way.
Once the smart contract is deployed
<>
on the blockchain, the customer can
Modify
<>
interact with it (the policy inspection/
Fire
Take
<>
Coverage
modification phase in Figure 1). In this
Picture of
phase, the customer can inspect the active
Vehicle
coverages and manually modify them
Modify
<>
if needed. The electronic device receives
Weather
the customer's requests and eventually
Schedule
Coverage
Coverage
updates the smart contract.
Modification
<>
To have a better view of the funcCheck
Weather
tionalities offered by the system, FigForecast
View
<>
ure 2 reports the use-case diagram for a
Blockchain
View
customer. To undersign a policy, the
Receipts
Modification
customer has to specify personal data.
History
After smart contract deployment, the
customer can activate the policy by
transferring some Ethers to it and then
<>
Compute
Receive
view the state of passengers, theft, fire,
Unspent
Refund
and weather events coverage. At that
Ethers
point, the customer can either schedule
an automatic coverage modification
(i.e., making the system change the FigUre 2. A use case diagram for the customer.
july 2018

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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018
