IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023 - 86

Internet of Everywhere and Edge Computing
& THE URBAN POPULATION is estimatedtobe5billion
and will be 60% of the world population by
2030.1 Ensuring basic infrastructure and policies
for the rapidly growing urban population is a challenge.
It is also necessary to improve governance,
service delivery, flexible access to public facilities,
and seamless mobility. The smart city is a promised
paradigm to mitigate issues caused by rapid
urbanization.1,2 Internet of Everything (IoE) is playing
an intrinsically vital role in improving the
quality of life of smart cities.3 Nevertheless, the formidable
growth of IoE and advancement of industry
4.0 (such as 5G and big tech) caused the
generation of big data. Thus, IoE and big data open
a gateway formore opportunities to address issues
of urbanization.1,4 However, bigdatahandling
(acquiring, processing, and managing) and provisioning
diverse quality of services requirements
become a tremendous challenge.2,5 Decentralized
multicloud (DMC) is emerging as a promising service
platform for the IoE and associated big data
handling concerns mentioned above.6,7
As a result, the Japanese government opened
the first and only all-in-one public robot testing
field (RTF) at Minamisoma, Fukushima, Japan, in
response to the growing demand for IoE driven by
heterogeneous IoT and IoRT of smart industry,
smart home, and smart city, aswell as the exponential
growth of demand for robots and their research
and development.6 RTF connects smart industries
to smart homes, which are critical components of
the smart city, by facilitating infrastructure for various
areas (domestic, industrial, transportation,
disaster response, aerial, and underwater).2 However,
RTF is experiencing the unavailability of an
all-in-one cloud platform. The University of Aizu
robotic research team is a working partner of the
RTF. To address the RTF cloud platform issue, we
proposed a project called the model-driven nextgeneration
DMC platform.6 Three key matrices are
the architectural design process (ADP), the provisions
for securedheterogeneity (PSH), and the provisions
for industrial evolution. It is expected that
the DMC module will be expanded to provide an
all-in-one platform for end-users who use smart
technologies, such as consumer electronics, consumer
robotics, and industrial robotics.
To ensure the PSH, integrity, and robustness
of the DMC, an extended cross-chain-based
blockchain (ECB) is proposed with an abstract definition.6
ECB has bipartite representations, one
solution-focused on the industrial and the other
on the general public. Moreover, we are working
on the Internet of Robotic Blockchain (IoRB), a.k.a.
ECB for industrial use cases. A general public use
case of the ECB is presented in this work, which
includes the smart city.
When it comes to IoE and mobility, seamless
PSH is up against a formidable challenge.1 IoT
and IoRT, for example, are either fixed to a single
network or portable across multiple networks,
depending on the end-user. A smart city's subnetworks
are all connected. Each communication
network has different security levels, and
each is vulnerable to security and privacy
breaches. It is a cognitive solution and a huge
challenge to provide seamless security and privacy
regardless of their geo-location.1,2
Moreover, the Japan's prime minister's office
introduced Society 5.0 and imposed norms
for next-generation systems.6 Cross-sectional
knowledge sharing, cooperation, and reforming
ecosystems are identified as three major norms.
Meanwhile, blockchain is a profound technique
for addressing IoT communication and
smart city security and privacy issues.8-10 On the
other hand, traditional blockchain has built-in
limitations, such as scalability, latency, and
cross-communication.11
To address the aforementioned blockchain
issues, onchain and non-onchain techniques are
proposed.11 Among the non-onchain solutions,
cross-chain, also known as the Internet of
Blockchains (IoB), maintains a relatively higher
level of degree of freedom with respect to
scalability, identity (autonomy/privacy), and
employing utility technologies (security, privacy,
interoperability).11,12
Therefore, cross-chain is gaining traction as a
promising technique that addresses various
security and privacy issues in diverse fields.13,14
On the other hand, cross-chain commodity solutions
based on the cloud are rarely mentioned.15,16
Furthermore, cloud solutions that
provide blockchain as a service are available as
a commodity.17 Nonetheless, cross-chain is a
potential service platform such as smart city
https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/english/society5_0/index.html.
86
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine
https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/english/society5_0/index.html
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023

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