16. August 2019
Interview with Ambrosus Inno Lab
Stefan Meyer on safety and chances in big data transfer systems
Von Sarah Liebigt
Decentralized IoT Ecosystem – Ambrosus Inno Lab presents itself with this slogan. CTO Stefan Meyer explains in an interview how blockchain data exchange can help to achieve maximum efficiency in the supply chain from the assembly line to the sales partner.
Farm & Food: Implementing the technology to establish a block chain for food would be enough of a challenge, some might say. What made you tackle the issue of food waste in particular?
Stefan Meyer: The block chain is an instrument that connects stakeholder and has a mechanism to follow the product throughout the supply chain; once this is in place for one segment of the supply chain, it can easily be extended to close the circular economy loop.
Safety concerns regarding the block chain infrastructure are repeatedly mentioned. You just released the sidechain architecture, please explain how this meets those concerns.
Side chains enhance design opportunities. If information should remain confidential, if physical asset needs more security against counterfeiting or data cannot be shared between stakeholders, this architecture extension would fit for any use cases.
You’ve propably heard of the German problem of fields not being connected to a network and tractors too old to be equipped with the latest tech. How do you deal with such difficulties?
There is a difference between IOT tech and block chain. Block chain is only a ledger in the digital world to improve the problematic systems of data sharing, management and storage. The real problems are in the real physical world and they have to be solved using tagging, sensors, IOT, and devices technologies. It is an entirely different area of research. If we spend two years building the block chain component, I spend 25 years in the second field developing on-line, rapid, non-destructive, cheap solutions to enhance deployment opportunities.
To track and trace products does only work with the right hardware. What are you offering to overcome obstacles like long distance data transfer or durability of transmitters?
The question is wrong; it should rather be oriented to T&T products. Hardware is needed to generate the right data (data is generated by hardware, stored and handled by software), then, the right architecture: IOT, communication, computing, hardware, sensors, etc. is needed to handle, transmit, store and retrieve the data.
Building hardware and software is our core product development but deploying these components through the right architecture is our real know-how, years of experience to define the best customized design. We are using printing solutions to reduce cost, we are using relay antenna and proprietary meshes to be able to send data over long distance, we are deploying computing on the edge, to allow less data to be transmitted, we are using coating technologies to extend shelf life of component; the point is to take each problematic separately and find the right solution.
What do you think: What challenge do we need to master next?
Ethics, regulations and understanding the benefit of these new technologies for modern society; we have tech and new products for the next ten years, even it is not easy to deploy them due to complex architecture, the real problem is understanding the use cases which bring positive benefits.
