Retail giant Walmart is all set to explore the world of Blockchain in a major way. It wants to build an army of autonomous robots authenticated and controlled via the blockchain network.
According to the documents published on Thursday by the U.S Patent and Trademark office , Walmart has claimed to patent a system that manages the “in-field authenticating of autonomous robots.” The Bentonville, AR-based Company submitted the patent application in early 2018.
The patent title might look like something straight out from the Terminator franchise, but Walmart claims that it is not building Skynet. On the other hand, the retail giant declares that it has plans to use its group of autonomous robots to make deliveries, presumably in a bid to contend with Amazon in a retail space.
The document goes on to discuss a system, in which a lot of robots manage the delivery of a package through distinct legs of a supply chain, using wireless signals to interconnect and authenticate the identity of each other.
As the complexity of the system would make it a high-value target for hackers, the retail giant firmly believes that distributed ledger technology (DLT) could help them thwart any such potential malfeasance.
It was stated, “In some embodiments of described above, blockchain technology may be utilised 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 the retail giant has made its entry into the world of the blockchain. Last year, Walmart applied to patent a system that will use DLT to handle package delivery hubs. Earlier this year, the firm was awarded a patent detailing an innovation focusing on the scheduling and delivery of packages.
In 2017, the retail giant filed for a patent application that makes use of blockchain technology to track delivery drones as they transfer packages from stores to customers.
