Walmart Plans To Create A Blockchain-Controlled Network Of Robots Handling Deliveries

One of the biggest retail giants within the United States, Walmart, recently announced its plans to build an army of autonomous robots that would be controlled and authenticated through a blockchain network.

According to the official documents that surfaced online this Thursday, the retail giant has even applied for a patent that will allow the system to oversee the ‘in-field authentication of autonomous robots’. The patent was published by the US Patent & Trademark Office with the original date of submission dating back to January 2018.

Currently, Walmart says that it plans to use legions of robots like these to make deliveries – and with that compete with Amazon in a retail landscape that looks like a sci-fi film. According to the documents, the system would coordinate robots in different stages within the delivery process – from handling deliveries to using wireless signals to communicate and identify every order.

A system like this would definitely be a great target for hackers. However, Walmart knows this and believes that the blockchain-related distributed ledger technology (DLT) could help secure it against potential malfeasances.

As the patent application reads:

“In some embodiments of described above, blockchain technology may be utilized to record authentication signals and identification information to facilitate or resulting from in-field authentication between autonomous electronic devices. One or more of the autonomous electronic devices described herein may comprise a node in a distributed blockchain system storing a copy of the blockchain record. Updates to the blockchain may comprise authentication signals or identification information, and one or more nodes on the system may be configured to incorporate one or more updates into blocks to add to the distributed database.”

This is not the first time Walmart sought patents for systems that are adopting the blockchain technology. Last year, the retail giant applied to patent a system that would use DLT to manage package delivery hubs (known as lockers) and reserve locker space for packages, ensuring that every order is delivered in a locker where there is available capacity.