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- In the IOTA Podcast “Untangled” new information about the development status of the EDAG CityBot and its IOTA integration were announced yesterday.
- Furthermore, IOTA Labs has published the “Spark burner wallet”.
In the latest episode of the IOTA Podcast “Untangled”, Johannes Barckmann and Alexander Süssemilch from EDAG appeared as guests yesterday. The company works together with IOTA on the EDAG Citybot. The CityBot is an autonomous vehicle which, thanks to its modularity concept, can perform various tasks such as taxi services, parcel delivery, waste disposal or gardening. IOTA is used as a data transfer and payment protocol within this concept.
The latest episode of Untangled was therefore about the mobility solutions of the future. Barckmann explained that EDAG received very positive feedback for the CityBot at this year’s International Mobile Exhibition (IAA) in Frankfurt, both from visitors and from the world of politics. Referring to the challenges and the general conditions he said:
The big chance to avoid traffic jams is to connect autonomus cars with a traffic flow managment system which guides and controls these cars […] The CityBot is a solution for all current challenges in our cities. So for instance in Madrid 8% of the city are is occupied by parking cars. […] So the CityBot is a reprensation of a complete ecosystem, it’s not just a car.
At the moment it is still a long way to go until the CityBot is introduced in a German or Asian city, Barckmann said:
It’s a long way and on Friday I have been to Munich, there is the model city Munich 20230 initiative … We had a pitch wit the CityBot and everbody said ‘Wow’, that might be our vision for 2030. […] On the other hand we have discussions with Asian companies saying which kind of city do you need and which kind of laws do you need and let us build this city with the CityBot.
So far, there is no Asian city that has actually placed an order. But Barckmann believes there is potential, as many new cities in Vietnam and other countries in this region are currently being built from scratch.
According to Barckmann, the next realistic step is for the CityBot to be used in 2023 in airports or other closed areas such as parks, for example, to carry out clean-up work. Furthermore, EDAG is currently in talks with various German airports to automate the traffic on the runway completely with autonomous vehicles. Commenting on the use of IOTA, Süssemilch explained:
At the moment we are at a early stage. We showed at the IAA the concept, but also wanted to wanted to show the development where we are using IOTA at the moment. In the context of smart parking cars will pay automatically and continously for the time. […] We recently presented this potential with the proof of concept at the IAA. The basis was our excisting Trive.me App. In this proof of concept we were able to show the advantages of IOTA for the business case.
EDAG’s Trive.me App is currently already available for IOS and Android and in use at various car parks in German cities. An expansion is planned in numerous cities, according to Süssemilch. However, IOTA payments are not (yet) integrated in the app:
Unfortunaletly the IOTA payment is not settled in the live app, just for this proof of concept. But perhaps in the near future we are able to pay with IOTA
You can listen to the full podcast at this link.
IOTA releases new Spark “Burner wallet”
Furthermore, the IOTA ecosystem received a new wallet yesterday. The development team behind the Trinity Wallet released “Spark”. According to the IOTA Foundation, the wallet is a “low-security” temporary web wallet or “burner wallet”. The concept of a burner wallet was first developed by Ethereum developer Austin Griffith.
The idea is to use the wallet for small amounts of money and for a short period of time and then “burn” it, erasing the seeds and transaction history. This gives a certain amount of privacy, since the data is not taken from the IOTA Ledger, but at least from the user’s smartphone or laptop.
As the IOTA Foundation explained, this is an experimental wallet, and the experience gained during its development is to flow into the Trinity Wallet V. 2.0:
In recent months, we have been experimenting with new frameworks and tooling. IOTA Labs is a new project within the IOTA Foundation to funnel our experimentation into something tangible. Whenever we create an experimental app, we will release it under IOTA Labs. Spark is the first app to be released under IOTA Labs and has served as a testing ground for some new ideas and tools. The results will feed into decisions around Trinity V2’s tech stack and functionality.
From a technical point of view Spark uses two new technologies. On the one hand Spark uses the IOTA JavaScript account module, which uses a payment request system for the use of unique addresses. By specifying an expected amount and a timeout on the payment request, it is intended to ensure that no funds go to an address that has already made an expenditure.
The aim of this feature is to test a future chat function of the Trinity wallet. On the other hand Spark uses the JavaScript framework Svelte, which is supposed to be highly performant and more mature than other JavaScript frameworks.
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