Technical Report- Cloud-Robotics Research: Extending the Extended
Crosschain of Blockchains (ECB) to Internet of Crosschains (IoC) andInternet of Robotics Blockchains
Akila Siriweera,

Keitaro Naruse

Abstract: Modern consumer electronics included consumer robots, which are made by heterogeneous Internet of Things, andInternet of robotics things are integral members of the Internet of Everything (IoE). IoE plays an incumbent role in both smart cities
and smart industry. Moreover, both smart city and industry IoE maintains various levels of security provisions. However, those arestill vulnerable to security and privacy breaches. Nonetheless, mobility increases the risk of security and privacy breaches. As aresult, in the internet era, providing seamless security and privacy for inter and intra communication of heterogeneous things is asignificant challenge. Furthermore, blockchain is one of the established communication techniques that ensure both security andprivacy. On the other hand, blockchain inherits trivial constraints with respect to scalability, latency, and interoperability. Crosschain is a blockchain concept that aims to alleviate the aforementioned concerns. Therefore, we proposed a multifactor aware(privacy, security, interoperability, and scalability) model-driven reference architectures for the Internet of Crosschains is proposed
for smart city and Internet of Robotics things is proposed to address issues of smart industry.

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reducing human intervention and downtime, which eventuallycontributes to SI of the IUC [8].
Moreover, according to our literature survey and experience on
the CR domain, we learned that most of the existing CR platforms
dedicate either specific use cases or domain (homogeneous) [9].
However, RTF is the place where it involves HR. Therefore,MNCRP should guarantee the privacy of each robotic use case andthe security of their system to ensure integrity and robustness. For
example, robots equipped with heterogeneous IoRT conduct theiroperation wired or wireless in CPS, FAS, and SCM. Moreover, CPS,FAS, and SCM are three of the main key components of SI.
Therefore, if an intruder takes to access and controls either local or
cloud communication system, it has a tremendous risk ofmanipulating CPS, FAS, and SCM and eventually sabotaging
operations [10]. Therefore, their operation's lack of privacy andsecurity is an enormous challenge when HR is involved in a given
CR platform.
Therefore, we proposed ECB, which guarantees the following
main factors: privacy, security, cross-communications, andscalability. Furthermore, Cross-chain is, a.k.a. the internet of theblockchain (IoB). Moreover, the proposed ECB dedicates the IoRTand robotics of the SI. Therefore, the proposed ECBs for SC as theInternet of Crosschains (IoC) and for SI as the Internet of Robotic
Blockchains (IoRB).

Introduction

Heterogeneous robots are equipped with diverse sensors, andthey have been generating enormous amounts of data that have beenused for diversified use cases (robots and processing requirements)
involving various stages of the robotics workflows. Then, cloudcomputing becomes the refuge from which to address such highvolumetric, velocity, and variety (3Vs) of Big Data involving
robotics workflows. That implies cloud robotics (CR) and CR
architecture have been playing pivotal roles in the robotics domain.
Therefore, it is essential to establish an all-in-one platform forheterogeneous robotics that have wide range of data processing
requirements, such as data lake (data acquisition and maintenance),and diverse requirements of processing including analytics of wide
range of robots in Fukushima-RTF.
With respect to the benchmarks of Industry 4.0, autonomy andinteroperability seemingly conflict with each other, and it istherefore challenging to provide both together. Moreover,interoperability may lead to creating new products and services, anddrone information can be shared with weather forecasting,photogrammetry, and streaming [1]–[3]. Decentralized multi cloud(DMC) leads to an increase in the autonomy and helps to maintainthe isles of each data and resource repos in a given platform.
However, we should facilitate interoperability in addition to theautonomy that may reduce the quality factor of autonomy because
both are inversely proportional. Blockchain is one of the leading
practices in the industry that provides a solid foundation for secured
interoperability as well as a single point of failure in central cloudarchitecture [4], [5]. However, blockchain suffers severe latency.
Crosschain has been introduced to alleviate the latency concern inblockchain networks [4]–[6]. Therefore, we propose to employ aframework module for extended Crosschain of blockchains (ECB)
to facilitate interoperability as well as secured autonomy.
The ECB comprises two key representations: the general publicand industry. The ECB for the general public is called the Internetof Cross-chain (IoC) for Internet of Everything (IoE) in the smart
city [7]. The ECB for the smart industry (SI) of the industry use
case (IUC) is presented in this work. Industrial IoT essentially plays
a major role in improving the process efficiency overall cost and2. Preliminaries and Motivation ScenariosThis section briefs the proposed RA for the MNCRP. We havedetailed modelling for the RA of the MNCRP [48]. Fig. 1 shows theproposed RA.
The physical layer: This layer maintains heterogeneous-robots
and end-users of the MNCRP. End-users described in scenario 2
dominate in this layer. All users will use same MNCRP for theirheterogeneous CR requirements.
The infrastructure layer: This layer dominates by CR-Eco-Sys.
The CR-Eco-Sys comprises collection of framework modules.
Those are compelling to accomplish dedicated jobs and those aredefined in semi-formal manner. DMC, GD-HDFS, MUT, COE,ECB, MAA-FE, MAA-ME, DTMS, and ISOW are respective
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framework modules proposed in the CR-Eco-Sys.
The analytical layer: This layer is responsible operations ofMAA-BE. The ASC is responsible to automate all data science
related workflows involving the analytics in the MNCRP.
The DMC: This is responsible to maintains the decentralized CR
eco system of the MNCRP. The DMC comprises edge, fog andcentral-cloud as three main sub-components.
The GD HDFS: This component maintains fault tolerant geodistributed Hadoop distributed file system facility. That provide
provisions for cost effective (due commodity hardware, filesystemshares the hardware with the computation framework as well),scalable, resilient to failure (bounce back effectively) and fault
tolerance (operating without interruption) data management.
The MUT: This component responsible to adapt required utility
middleware technologies including ROS and tools involving CR to
the GD-HDFS environment.
The COE: This component responsible to manage scalability of
end-user’s custom environments (container orchestration) acrossthe geo-distributed DMC environments.
The MAA: This responsible to manages automation ability acrossthe platform. As a summary, it will act as interface agent and takeintelligent decisions. To ease the operational and characteristics ofthe overall process, we have divided MAA module in to three subcomponents. The front-end operation of the MAA manages by theMAA-FE agent, the middle-end operation manages by the MAA-MEagent and the back-end operation manages by the MAA-BE agent.
The MAA-FE responsible to deal with all requests are coming fromthe physical layer. Moreover, it activates adequate waypoint of theMAA-FE agent and drives that request to adequate waypoint of themiddle-agent. The MAA-ME is responsible to automaticallymanages that given task across the components with respective totheir request’s inputs and outputs. Then MAA- BE is responsible
to automate required analytical and data science requirements (BigData analytics, deep learning, or machine learning) if it requested
such requirement by the MAA-ME.
The DTMS: This component is responsible for digital twin in theMNCRP. It allows users to prepare digital models of physicalmaterials and robots, simulate and analyze them.
The ECB: This component guarantees the secured crosscommunication within components (intra) and systems (inter). It
employs extended Crosschain of the Blockchain technology.

Scenario-1 for Smart City
Scenario 1: The University of Aizu and Fukushima prefectural
government are partners of RTF, and they commenced a project tobuild a model smart city for next-generation Japan based on city A,
which complies with Society 5.0 as one of their visionary project
milestones. As a result, the robot research group at the Universityof Aizu will design, develop, and commission software solutions
for a model smart city. DMC serves as the model smart city's cloud
platform. According to a survey of city dwellers, the research teamdiscovered that a typical family and their IoE involvement are
depicted in Fig. 2, and that they have serious security and privacy
concerns.
Moreover, the team identified two main types of household IoTand IoRT: fixed to a home network and portable. Nevertheless,those are dedicated to either shared or personal. Here P person andhis family are shown as the representative family of city A. P person
travels through Fig. 2.a, Fig. 2.b, Fig. 2.c, and Fig. 2.d subnetworks
to travel to the office. He uses his office network for his portabledevices. He occasionally moves to Fig. 2.e, shown as café network.
He returns home via the path shown by arrows.
Providing seamless security and privacy in smart city proposals isa huge challenge. The proposed solution should, however, support
scalability (end-users and their IoE).

Scenario-2 for Smart Industry
Scenario 2: Company A is designing, assembling, and maintaining
FAS included CPS. Company R is an online automated grocery
factory chain, which is already discussed in Subsection II of ourprevious work [3]. Fig. 3 depicts the use case of FAS deployments
done by Company A. Fig. 3.a shows geo-distributed factories
connected to the DMC. Fig. 3.b represents one of the factories
among the SCM of Company R. Factory is made by multiple
production lines given by Fig. 3.c. Also, in Fig. 3.c, the production
line comprised a collection of cells. Fig. 3.d shows individual cells
and associate CPS. Finally, fig. 3.e offers the array of IoRT
involving preparing robotic arms and their operations called a cell.
Meantime, Company R is experiencing two issues; the first issue isthe risk of breaching their local and geo-distributed network by
intruders. The second issue is that it has experienced a lack ofconfidence in the quality of service of existing SCM. Therefore,
Company A contacts the UoA CR research group to find a solution
for the issues mentioned above; the integrity of their SCM, privacy,
and security of their communication/ operations should beaddressed.

Fig. 1. 𝑀4𝐶𝑅 Abstract normative-view - RA for
framework for MNCRPDTMS = Digital twin modeling and simulation,
DMC = Decentralized multicloud,
MUT = Middleware for adapting utility technologies,
COE = Container orchestration engine,
GD-HDFS = Geo-distributed Hadoop distributed file system, ECB = Extended crosschain for blockchain,
ISOW = Information as service based on domain ontology and web services
MAA = Multiagent for automation, (FE/ ME/ BE = frontend/ middle end/ backend) ASC = Automatic service composition

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City A(b) Cellular/Public subnetwork 1(d) Office subnetwork

Village
Portable smart IoT

Smart OfficeCar

Fixed smart devices

Phone
Watch

Voice assistant

Key Tag

Television

Smart homesubnetwork

Air Conditioner

Security camera

P’s Personal IoT devises
Robot vacuum cleaner

Person A’s Personal IoT(a) Home and family IoT/ IoRT usage
IoT/IoRT Fixed to home network, and portable(c) Cellular/Public subnetwork 25G/6G

Person P in different places(e) Cellular/Public subnetwork 3
Person P mobility

Geofences of each networks

Fig. 2. City A, P person (a city dweller), his family, their IoT/IoRT usages, and person P’s typical working day mobility within city subnetworks
Central cloud-computing sublayer

Fog-computing sublayer

Edge-computing layer
Edge-computing sublayer
FACTORY 1
FACTORY 5

a factory

FACTORY 1

FACTORY 3

FACTORY 2

FACTORY 4(b) A factory: Collection of production lines are connected
to edge-computing layer(a) A factory network: Geo-distributed factory network consists with its supply chain
managements and production lines

a production line

an IoRT(e) IoRT’s use to setup cella cell(d) A cell & associated CPS: Design forconducting a specific task(c) A production line & associated CPSs: Collection of Cells, design tocomplete a specific production process

Fig. 3: High level view of smart industry of smart factory network, which included factory automation system and supply chain management

3.

two perspectives: physical representation (PR) and blockchain
representation (BR). The physical representation or appearance ofa system or its components is referred to as PR. Furthermore, forthe given system or components, BR stands for blockchain
terminology.
SA for the smart city A proposed based on scenario 1 explained
typical family and mobility. Person A’s family is referred to, andhis mobility is described in relation to him and his typical working
day. Fig. 4 depicts the city's five subnetworks and their geofences.
The PR of Fig. 4.a depicts person A’s home and his family's
IoT/IoRT communication network. Each adult maintains their
IoT/IoRT network w.r.t. the PR and atomic blockchain w.r.t. theBR. All shared/common IoT and IoRT devices are classified into

Proposed Solutions

This section briefs the proposed RA for the MNCRP. We havedetailed modelling for the RA of the MNCRP [48]. Fig. 1 shows theproposed RA.
System architecture for smart city
The derived SA for smart city A is shown in Fig. 4, which is
divided into five subfigures. The smallest IoT/IoRT network isshown in Fig. 5, which was created using the Lightning blockchain.
Moreover, Fig. 5.a and Fig. 5.b can be considered the IoE network's
atomic representation. Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 are prepared based on Eqs.
(3′.c.1) and (3′.c.2). Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 have two representations from3Smart City A Model(b) PR: Cellular/ Public subnetwork 1
BR: A Cosmos cross-chain of personal portable blockchains& Cross-chains of offices and homes(d) PR: Smart office private subnetwork
BR: A Cosmos cross-chain of departments
blockchains & personals portable blockchains
Dept. 2
IoT
Blockchain
Dept. 1
IoT
Blockchain

Smartvillage
P’s
Portable
IoT
Blockchain

CommonFixed IoT
Blockchain

Portable
IoT
Blockchain

Children
IoT
Blockchain

P’s
Personal
Fixed IoT
Blockchain
Adult
Member 2
Personal
Fixed IoT
Blockchain

Zoom in…

TransitioningDept. n
IoT
Blockchain

PR: Physical Representation
BR: Blockchain Representation

P’s
Portable
IoT
Blockchain

P’s
Portable
IoT
Blockchain

P’s
Portable
IoT
Blockchain

Adult
Member nPersonal
Fixed IoT
Blockchain

Customer
Portable
IoT
Blockchain…

(e) PR: Café Cellular/ Public subnetwork 3(c) PR: Cellular/ Public subnetwork 1(a) PR: P’s Smart Home
BR: Cosmos cross-chain of customers
BR: Cosmos cross-chain of united Lightning Blockchains BR: A Cosmos cross-chain of personal portablemobile devices’ atomic blockchainsblockchains & different types cross-chains

Fig. 4: 𝑀4𝑆𝐶 abstract non-normative-view—SA for smart city A scenario 1

the resolution of social problems and restore a human-centricsociety and its values. Cross-sectional knowledge sharing,cooperation, and reforming ecosystems are three major provisionsof Society 5.0. The proposed IoC is complying with the norms set
by Society 5.0.

single or multiple subnetworks w.r.t. the PR and atomic blockchains
w.r.t. the BR.
Meanwhile, according to the adult's choice, children's devices
are assigned to a single or multiple subnetwork. In addition,
mobile/portable devices are classified as an atomic blockchain unit.
Finally, all of person A's family's atomic blockchains are linked toa single Cosmos cross-chain, which is made up of a collection ofblockchains.
Fig. 4.b represents the adjacent cellular/public subnetwork w.r.t.
the PR and Cosmos cross-chain w.r.t. the BR, which provides
service coverage to the smart village and all mobile IoT/IoRT
carriers within its geofence. Once person A leaves his home
geofence, he enters Fig. 4.b subnetwork coverage. Then, his
mobile/portable devices are transitioning into a Fig. 5 shown atomic
blockchain. PR of Fig. 5.a represents person A’s mobile device
network. BR of Fig. 5.a is atomic blockchains made by IoT/IoRT.
Person A and his mobile/portable devices also traverse Fig. 4.band Fig. 4.c subnetworks to reach Fig. 4.d subnetwork of his office.
In the office environment, his office IoT/IoRT belongs by default tothe respective department blockchain. Fig. 4.d office maintains
Cosmos cross-chain. Moreover, person A’s personal mobile
IoT/IoRT connects office Cosmos cross-chain as an atomic
blockchain shown in Fig. 5.a. When person A goes to the café public
subnetwork shown in Fig. 4.e, the same thing happens. All mobile
IoT and IoRT customers connect to the café Cosmos cross-chain via
their atomic blockchains. Subsequently, we derived the SA for SI.

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Conclusion[8]

We proposed ECB for the smart city and industry, which ismultifactor aware (security, privacy, scalability, and crosscommunication) communication platforms. First, we proposed anarchitectural decision model, then a reasoning abstraction solution
for RA, and finally devised SA’s for scenarios. DMC is theIoC/CaaS cloud platform. This work is a submodule of ECB, which
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