The year is coming to the end. Plenty of people follow the tradition and sum up the results of the year. I’d like to summarize too but not the whole year (otherwise, it’ll look like a little book). Last four months — that’s my goal. Mariia has already given a summary of the summer 2017, so it’s time to revise autumn and December and move onwards and upwards.

First things first: what did we spend 4 months for?

About releases of AIRA project

Release 0.11 — “Dummy validator”

You can see that liabilities towards “validator” were added to the contract. This is a very simple validator: it can only confirm transactions. Yes, it always says “YES”, that’s why it got the name “Dummy validator”. The main point why there’s a validator in the release is to demonstrate the basic idea through a simple example. Not long ago release 0.11.1 came out in terms of which errors were fixed and some improvement such as adding basic implementation of AIRA robonomics protocol and updating Parity to version 1.7.6 were done.

About new skills of AiraEthBot. What can it do now?

Our Telegram bot is upgraded and ready to offer its services. You still can create your own token, but what’s new? The server framework was upgraded. Since Telegram-bot was launched in winter 2016 Ethereum network expanded. Consequently, the impacts on the full Ethereum node grew up. The full node is necessary for the bot to send transactions and watch over the net state. The tracking function was proceeded also.

Here is a short list of implemented functions:

1. Accounting: each client bot has its own fully-featured ethereum-address based on smart contract. This contract is able to receive and send ERC20 and Ether-token, appeal to the factory of smart contracts;

2. DAO Factory: there is a possibility to create contracts of ERC20 token, ERC20 token with additional issuing, ERC20-compatible ethereum wallet (ether vault);

3.TxWatch: the bot can track transactions with the stated address of the recipient and send notifications when the transaction was successfully fulfilled.

Occupation of Ropsten test network

Don’t worry! Everything’s OK with the network. We’ve just launched a test miner in Ropsten network. Now he accomplishes more than 20% of all this test network transactions using robonomics protocol. This is necessary for us to validate the idea of the first service described above.
You can observe miner’s work here: https://pool.aira.life/

The cherry on top of Airalab latest activity

The most interesting I saved for later. The thing which was discussed in the headquarters (aka Airalab command center) so much, which was worked at the whole autumn and finally came out. The brain child of Alisher Khassanov — Industry 4.0 in use. There are already 3 videos about it on our YouTube channel and a life video streaming. Right now you can try Alpha-release game Industry 4.0. On December 23 it created the 512th liability contract. Soon it will be available for playing. To join the game use this link. In the meantime we are preparing a couple of post dedicated to the new game. Stay tuned and don’t miss the start of the game!

Across the Universe or Airalab events

Surely, we were traveling not across the whole universe but we visited impressive list of countries and cities during these 4 months. Why? We are going on validating our idea of robot economics among experts of Blockchain, robotics and economics and also forming academic environment around AIRA project. More details about Airalab journey you can get on Medium. Meanwhile I’ll tell you about the most important events.

First of all the research team leader of Airalab Sergey Lonshakov participated in Big Data Conference with the report “Developing the idea of world computer Ethereum: Casper, Sharding and Delegated POS”. Unfortunately, there is no translation into English. Anyway, Sergey gave the review of Ethereum history having reminded the audience the main points of its development, mentioned hard forks and compared them.

At the end of September we were at the conference IROS 2017 where took part in the exhibition, made a presentation, saw the trends in AI and Robotics, communicated with prospective partners, received invitations to other conferences and acquired friends.

PhD Alexandr Kapitonov, one of Airalab co-founders, has been to RED UAS 2017 in Sweden. It’s one of the key conferences in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Flight Management System development. Aleksandr presented the article about Blockchain-based protocol of autonomous business activity for multi-agent systems consisting of UAVs.

At the same time Sergey Lonshakov, Alisher Khassanov and Alexander Krupenkin were at the conference in Barcelona. There was a congress (IoTSWC — IoT Solutions World Congress) on Internet of Things and a forum on Blockchain solutions. During this event, Alisher Khassanov managed to find out how to improve Industry 4.0 in use up to ready-made solution for manufacturers. Also it was interesting to the guys to learn the vision of innovations suggested as solutions for Industrial Internet of Things. Certainly, it was important to establish contacts with the members of this field and receive feedback of what Airalab was doing. Within the forum (BSF — Blockchain Solutions Forum) developers covered the ways of using Blockchain technologies. Our team members saw that besides cryptocurrency bubble there is a wide range of Blockchain applications in real sector with creating added value or saving.

Apart from everything else, this year was memorable due to Rally Show. The main events were covered on Medium, YouTube, in Twitter and Instagram. In this post I’d like to tell about what was outside the camera’s view. This is an event of Crypto Valley in Zug, Switzerland. Being the member of Crypto Valley, Sergey was able to attend the meeting. Within the event general plans for 2018 and membership fee were discussed. The most interesting topic for discussion was carrying out the conference with an academic perspective in Zug.

One of the most important events of this autumn was DevCon 3. Sergey Lonshakov delivered a presentation “How we can prepare Mars for Devcon 50”. He shared the idea that Paris Agreement should be transformed into human-machine system. With the same topic he visited Bonn Climate Conference. 6–17 November 2017 the UN Climate Change Conference took place in Bonn, Germany and was presided over by the Government of Fiji. Furthermore Sergey had a speech in Berlin at The Token Economy: The Rise of Tokens and Protocols with the report The economy of robots.

In addition, Aleksandr Kapitonov and Community Support of Airalab Mariia Vasileva attended Web Summit 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. Web Summit is a technology conference held annually since 2009. The topic of the conference is centered on internet technology and contains a mix of CEOs and founders of tech startups together with a range of people from across the global technology industry, as well as related industries. There our guys were able to learn the trend what turned into an interesting post from Mariia.

Aleksandr Kapitonov is appreciated as a specialist in the field of robotics. That’s why he has been invited already twice to judge international competitions on robotics WRO. This year the contest as in Costa Rica. It was pleasant for Alexandr to see the presentation of ITMO University. I’d like to mention again that Alexandr teaches at ITMO. But that’s not the main reason of his interest to the presentation. The truth is that ITMO team made a robot collecting data of forest state. Creative robot-forester was an interesting example of collecting data.

14–16 November Alisher Khassanov, Industry 4.0 engineer and Evgene Radchenko, Community support lead were in one of the industrial centers of Russia, in the city Naberezhnye Chelny t the forum “Digital production and the future of industry”. The guys told about AIRA and saw a lot of ideas for Blockchain application in industry.

In the middle of December, namely December 15–16 there was Blockchain Fairytales Conference in Minsk. This international conference for blockchain developers was arranged by our friends from Cyber Fund. Sergey Lonshakov told about robotization with regard to economy, about what we are doing in Airalab and what kind of solutions we offer. More details you can get here but it’s available only in Russian. That’s great that there are such events where people interested in Blockchain technologies can meet and share experience and knowledge!

What blew everyone’s socks off was BlockchainPoly! Alternatively to classic Monopoly nothing on the field could be bought. The game was about participating in ICO: trading of cryptocurrencies on exchanges, questions for money, etc. That’s how guys from Cyber Fund decided to celebrate Christmas.

At the end of summer we got a new member of Airalab. This is Valerii Chernov, a first-year student from ITMO University. He works at AIRA projects and promotes the idea of robot economics. He is the youngest member of Airalab. Nevertheless it doesn’t prevent him from traveling and promoting the idea of robonomics. This December Valerii participated in Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar (SIYSS), which coincides with the Nobel Prize festivities and is held annually since 1976. During the event, participants presented their research, attended lectures by Nobel Prize laureates, discussed the relevant issues and even danced with some of the world’s brightest minds. Valerii presented AIRA project with a report “Robot Economics: Next Step in Digital Economy” explaining to people what Robot Economics is and how it can enhance our everyday life. Read more in his interview for ITMO University.

We are concluding preparations of the stand “Industry 4.0” for public demonstration and have begun searching the possibility to adopt it in pilot mode. Being at Blockchain Pitch during the forum “Digital production and the future of industry” Alisher Khassanov got acquainted with the Head of Industry 4.0 Educational Programmes at Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, Pavel Bilenko. At the end of December Alisher came to Skolkovo and had a couple of meetings with the representatives of the companies with which Airalab can conduct a pilot project dedicated to blockchainization of supply chain at a factory in Russia. It provided better understanding of following actions for AIRA industrial application.

Airalab makes friends or how we got contacts of like-minded people

We carried out meetings with 5 famous universities which do researches in robotics in Europe and the USA in order to get feedbacks for our idea. In September Aleksandr Kapitonov had a couple of meetings and discussions with Stefano Stramigioli, one of the best roboticists in Europe. This acquaintance can promote our development and cooperation with foreign partners. This important contact is due to Dominik Boesl, the founder of the project Robotic & A.I. Governance and Vice President Consumer Driven Robotics KUKA in Augsburg, Germany. We also carried out a meeting with him to discuss Robotic Governance.

Being in Canada at the conference IROS 2017 I met the professor Fabio Bonsignorio. Fabio Bonsignorio is currently a Professor at the Biorobotics Institute in Pisa. Also he is the founder and CEO of Heron Robots (advanced robotic solutions). He was very interested in our project and spent a lot of time at our stand asking many questions. After that we continued communicating with him via e-mails. Also the team was interested in personal meeting during the Rally Show. So Aleksandr Kapitonov, Alexander Krupenkin and Sergey Lonshakov met with him and discussed possible ways for Airalab to cooperate with euRobotics.

Visiting Boston with a presentation about AIRA at a meet-up Aleksandr Kapitonov got acquainted with a Techstars mentor Babak Kia. This acquaintance was very important as Alexandr found new ways for collaboration. Babak got very interested in our project. Now we keep in touch via e-mails and I’ve even got an interview from him.

All of these people are experts in their fields and we appreciate that they approved of our robonomics idea! More detailed you can read in the post of Aleksandr Kapitonov. In this post he wrote not only about the feedback from our colleagues but also about trends in robotics and how they influenced on Airalab strategy. It’s an open secret that we’re on the threshold of total robotization. What does in mean for us? Read about it in the post of Alexandr.

Plans, plans, plans…

We have already mentioned about the project Robot-painter. In the new year we’ll pay it more attention and….who knows? Maybe, exactly you’ll be the first to buy its pictures.

Besides, as I wrote above the Robonomic Game will completely work instead of Alpha-version. You’ll be able to control smart factories by means of tokens and see how it responds to market’s demand.

Our plans are….GLOBAL. We are going to develop AIRA project in all directions: technological, academical and social. I won’t put everything on the table, but the technology is top-of-mind. Soon we are going to Asia, then to the US…Why? Subscribe to our blog, channel, watch our development in any social network which is comfortable for you (Twitter, Instagram) and be the first to learn about! Stay tuned with Airalab!

So that’s how our year came to an end. Productively, right?) And how you could mention from the plans above we aren’t going to remain complacent and will keep going forward! In the following year we’d like to wish you to catch our passion and built no less ambitious plans! Happy New Year!

Wake me up when the year ends was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Not long ago we got a very useful and that’s why very important contact. In November we got acquainted with Babak Kia, a Techstars mentor and the High Tech Industry Champion at MassChallenge — the world’s largest Not-for-Profit Startup Accelerator (they don’t take equity from their startups!). Now we are discussing the conditions of our collaboration as there many ways of it. Meanwhile I’ve arranged an interview with him. Here are the questions and his answers which we got from him via e-mails and a skype call. That was my first interview in my life. Needless to say that it was my first interview via skype. It wasn’t quite easy first of all due to the lag time. In addition. Babak Kia is a busy person for at least as he has 16 more such projects like ours to consult. Thus I managed to get through to him via skype only for the second time. Luckily, Babak is as friendly and helpful as most of americans. It helped me a lot not to be nervous.

It’ll be great if you give us a feedback about our ideas and project.

This is a general feedback (as opposed to a technical feedback, or an investor feedback).

I like your hypothesis that you want machines to be completely independent. However, for this truly to happen, machines need to create not just work, but also value. They can then use this created value and exchange it for other valuables, such as more energy, faster attention by other robots, shorter travel paths, etc. The value they create has to be above a threshold of sustainability for them to become more autonomous. But a future world where robots work collaboratively by exchanging goods and services in an open and transparent market is definitely the future that is up and coming! Technologies such as Blockchain and smart contracts (and all the underlying strengths that they provide with privacy, trustless-ness, decentralized, etc.) are the way to make this future happen!

As you have correctly highlighted in your whitepaper, robots will inevitably come into people’s lives. In fact, in 10 years, I think that many households will have more robots than smartphones. One thing that I would like to highlight here (and it is a common misconception about robots) is that a robot is not just made to perform tasks that are beyond human capabilities. I think that in fact robots will be used more in order to augment or replace human beings in tasks that are lesser-or-equal to what humans can already do, not greater, as the general fear with robots may be. An example of this (in the software world) is the chatbot, but hardware examples of these can be found in the “smart home” with Roombas.

It also appears from your literature that you want robots to be driven by motivation, rather than commands. For example, “for whom is this coffee” implies that the robot is motivated by helping someone, and that someone can either be a human (who gets to drink the coffee), or it can be the cup of coffee (i.e. an object that needs to fulfill its destiny)! I think that the motivation aspect is just absolutely fascinating, and that perhaps you can think about it even more (for example, a functional language such as Haskell may be better suited to fulfilling motivations than it is to commands).

Finally, your description of money for robots is of course important, but a) robots don’t just to have to be interested in money (they can be interested in energy for instance), and b) robots don’t have to exchange only bitcoin with one another. In general, “coins” have to have a lower transaction cost, a more readily available supply, and a faster processing time than is offered by bitcoin for robots to have a meaningful transactional platform. There are many other protocols out there that provide some or all of these value exchange attributes, and in any event this is a larger conversation than the scope of this email. Nevertheless, your whitepaper makes excellent discussion of all of these concepts (economics, markets, regulation, valuation, etc.).

How have you decided to become a crypto investor? And how long have you been interested in Blockchain?

Well, first of all I’m not a crypto investor, or even an investor of any kind. I am only an academic in Blockchain space and an engineer who builds things. I have been interested in Blockchain since the very early days, primarily because it’s “simply” an extension of something that has been around for a long time, and that is distributed computing. So I view Blockchain technologies and platforms such as Ethereum and smart contracts as extensions of distributed computing, and in many ways the future of how we will interact with computers.

That’s really impressive! And now I feel I’m a newbie even more. I read that you help a lot of projects on Blockchain. How do you find such projects? And how do you choose them? How do you choose who to help?

It is quite easy to find blockchain projects, there are simply so many of them! Choosing which ones to work with however is a little bit more difficult. And different people have different metrics for choosing projects or startups. Some people, investors for example, choose a project because they ultimately want to make money. Not that making money is bad, but this means that they are looking for projects with highest likelihood to have a return on their investment. But some people like myself seek technical challenge, and gravitate more towards projects that are just incredibly technically amazing. Your project, for example, is incredibly amazing: you are setting the foundation a future where robots and machines will autonomously transact and exchange value with one another! To create this foundation is simply remarkable, and to me as an engineer, is simply fascinating! So my own metric for selecting projects is a technical approach that lays the foundations of something that is profound and highly impactful to our futures.

There are so many different projects. What tendencies can you see in IT and Robotics?

There are a lot of different areas in robotics. We have people like Boston Dynamics who are doing bipedal robots, cheetahs, making robots use tools, understand their environments, and interact autonomously with human beings. On the other hand, there are some robotic companies — which people don’t consider robotics at all — such as Tesla who are looking at this from a different angle. Their goal is to build robots that drive on the road and don’t get into an accident. There are a lot of “apps” in the robotics world and I think that one of the killer apps is autonomous navigation such as Tesla. It is a killer app because it’s an enabler. It is doing something that human beings probably don’t want to do in the first place (which is sit in mindless traffic on their way back from work). Robots should have this vision — to free human beings from the mundane. Project AIRA can be another killer app — give robots a platform to be motivated to do work, and a means of exchanging value whether it be currency, energy or something else.

A little more about universities. Of course, I know that you teach at Boston University. Tell me please, how does academic activity help you in this work with projects? Does it help you to understand if a project is promising?

This is an interesting question. I’ve never asked myself if a projects is promising — that is up to the entrepreneur or to the founder to decide. What I can decide however is whether a project is technically amazing, and technically amazing means what I referenced previously, that it is a fundamental and foundational impact to how we currently do things, and seeks to move the needle forward on making a better future.

The second part of your question is also very interesting! Engineering does in fact help understand if a project is promising. Engineering is about building, and design, and measurement, and innovation, and helping people, and so many other constructs that when taken together will not only create a framework for doing things, but also a framework for understanding how things need to be built. Applying that framework to a project will yield not only an “interesting coefficient” if I may use that term, but also a building roadmap that charts the path to bringing that project to life!

I hope that our project looks promising.

Your project is amazing! Yes, absolutely! Your project is forward looking, it’s creating a platform for the future of robotics. As you know, our future is in a bunch of different areas, some of which are Blockchain, AI, and robotics. Your project is the confluence of all three!

That’s really great to hear such an opinion. Also I’d like to ask you: are your colleagues from the university interested in Blockchain?

Yes they are. I think that when people find out about Blockchain, which is not that hard to do, then they are easily drawn to it because of how it binds together so many concepts to create a remarkable platform for the next generation of computing. And if they have the opportunity, absolutely, they jump at the chance to have an impact to the Blockchain space.

Thanks to Babak Kia for spending time sharing with us his opinion. It’s essential for Airalab to communicate with such experienced experts. We are already anticipating our future cooperation, new meetings and great results!

Not long ago we got a very useful and that’s why very important contact. was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After a visit to sunny Costa Rica the co-founder of Airalab Alexandr Kapitonov continued his travel and went further to look for like-minded people in America. Let me tell you he succeeded in making new blockchain-friends! His point of destination was Boston. First of all he attended a meet-up on the 17th of November and represented there our project. The host of the event, Babak Kia, who is a famous investor and a mentor of start-ups, was interested in our ideas. Alexandr and Babak had a talk and found a lot of touch point for collaboration.

Also Navroop Sahdev made a report on “Economic Structures With Blockchain Technology”. She told that it’s necessary to rethink the way our economies, economic structures and the economic relationships between individuals and institutions are structured. Navroop Sahdev presented three key ideas at the intersection of Economic Science and Blockchain Technology in the session.

November 20, Alexandr met with Assistant Professor and Chair of Computer Science Anatoly Temkin. Dr. Temkin teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in discrete mathematics, computer language theory, cryptography, algorithms, and computer information systems. In 2004, he received the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching. His research interests include information security and curriculum design. During the meeting they discussed upcoming risks of total robotization and its side effects.

After that Alexandr Kapitonov met with Eduardo Castello Ferrer in MIT Media Lab. Eduardo graduated from Portsmouth University (UK) and then got his M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in Robotics Engineering in Osaka University (Japan). Now his research field is swarm, distributed robotics and novel agricultural devices. He is interested in solving the task of control group of robots and works at the problem similar to ours. We hope that in the nearest future you will see some publications about our co-operation.

Then Alexandr had a visit to MIT: Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. There he met with a group of developers. They are creating a system of digital identification on Blockchain basis.

“ It was a big surprise for me, that a lot people in the US are open for co-operation and ready to dive into our developments. Moreover, plenty of colleagues are at one with our approach to solving the problem of society robotization. I hope such ideas will become integrative for most of researches and developers all over the world!”
PhD Alexandr Kapitonov, one of Airalab co-founders

Unfortunately, only Alexandr managed to come to the USA. But we are planning to make a new visit in the nearest future and this time a bigger part of Airalab team will set off. Stay tuned to get up-date information about our trips!

Airalab Rally Show 2017, the USA was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Airalab attends events not only abroad. We are also interested in meeting new people, communication and collaboration inside Russia. This week two members of Airalab team went to Naberezhnye Chelny, one of industrial heartlands. There was a forum “Digital production and the future of industry” in IT-park.

People came to Naberezhnye Chelny to up-to-date on new technologies of promoting the effectiveness in production, meet top officials of enterprises, find clients, new reliable suppliers of products and services, share experience, understand industry trends and development way. There were about 600 delegates from regions of Russia and also foreign ones: Renault, KUKA, Valeo Serviсe, KAMAZ, NEFAZ (Neftekamsk Automotive Plant).

Different projects and development were presented, a couple of seminars, plenary sessions and roundtable discussions took place. Our colleagues were of course interested in the following parts of the forum. First of all in plenary session “Four steps on the way toward Digital Era” as they could there witness discussing the tasks which are main for Airalab:

“The existing economy model is built on the idea of promoting the effectiveness in production by means of automation without changing technical process. In fact, these processes can exist without IT. But in consequence of Industry 4.0, IT is the thing which will become a business core and cause non-convertible change in production and business. All the decisions in digital economics will be made according to the possibilities and resources of IT. The technique for moving towards a new paradigm is Internet of Things. Due to it production in real-time mode will be controlled by an intelligent system through interaction with global environment. All technical devices will provide feedback and make technical decisions with further reconfiguration of production. The core of a firm will be data.”

Of no less interest was the seminar “Industry robotization: the experience of Europe and Russia”, as Europe is one of the world leader having density of robotization higher than the average one. Main focus of Airalab was attracted by Pitch-session “Federal project Blockchain Pitch”, where eventual buyers saw projects applying Blockchain technologies in industry. Having presented themselves, the companies based on Blockchain could find innovative company ready to create and launch pilot projects based on Blockchain technologies together with government institutions and corporations. Alisher Khassanov and Evgene Radchenko saw such projects like SpiCh, a decentralised platform which works at transparent process of delivery, etc. Airalab brought its idea of a first step to robot economics in production through open smart factory. The presented solution shows how factories can integrate and reveal their data for customer using AIRA supply chain data logger based on Ethereum Blockchain.

“Migration to Blockchain in production processes and supply chain create added value by providing valid data about the process of producing goods and its shipment conditions to customers. Data about public Blockchain, trust to which is shared by customers.
A buyer acquires not only a product. He buys it with the whole history from rolling off the production line till scanning its bar-code with a smartphone. Just imagine, not only goods but also raw material is exchanged with data from each step of processing. Each product, each important item can tell you its history. Will you buy products for your factories without history?
We suggest a technology of putting this data, information about supply chain, on Ethereum Blockchain. This is a Siemens gateway with AIRA Software which is connected to the equipment field level, to PLC-system.”

a piece out of Alisher Khassanov’s presentation

Alisher Khassanov made a request for making pilot projects to show how vendors can add a value to their products using AIRA on field level systems like PLC.

“There were representatives of educational institutions, government authorities and industrial enterprises. It was great to see that people understand Blockchain technologies, their advantages and notice interest in innovations. Also it was useful to get advice for further work.” Alisher Khassanov

“Digital production and the future of industry” was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Where does it begin? You are sitting in the classroom at school, the bell is ringing and the teacher is asking to stay for a while: a representative from a university has come. He invites everyone who is interested to join robotics laboratory. You come to the first class, then to the second one, the third…You are captivated more and more. And you can hardly realize that you are already flying to international competition for pupils to Costa Rica. Sounds incredible? But this is how it happens. It seems unreal for some people, like a plot of a film. However for quite some time now school students from robotics laboratory at ITMO University in St Petersburg take part in contests going to different countries. The other day robotics competition in Costa Rica ended up.

World Robot Olympiad (WRO) is an international competition for pupils and students from more than 60 countries taking place annually from 2004. It motivates young people all over the world to develop their creativity, design and problem solving skills arranging educational competitions. This year the topic was “Sustainabots: Robots for sustainability”. Sustainabots are aimed to take care of the planet, people and themselves. A Sustainabot doesn’t affect the world, instead of this it integrates 3 pillars of Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Economical. Such robots will help forward having sustainable regions all around the world and preserving our mother earth.

The Russian team represented its robot Forester. It can move about and collect data about the state of the forest: the state of trees, places needing clear cutting and possible fire. It’s important to not only demonstrate the abilities of the robot but also do it in a creative way. To impress participants and judges one of the guys from ITMO team dressed like a woodman who takes care of the forest and collects data. He meets the robot and understands that now it can cope with this task well up to. People liked the team and the robot so much that started taking pictures with them.

There were 4 categories at WRO 2017: Regular Category, Advanced Robotics Challenge, WRO Football Category and Open Category. Russia captured gold in all the age groups of Regular Category, all the prizes places in junior category, the third place in Football Category and two golden medals in Open Category. So young and so talented! It encourages and inspires making feel proud for the country. Any way you can ask me why I am telling all of this. First of all ITMO is our partner and we are glad to learn such news about it. Also a couple of Airalab team members have graduated from ITMO University and also a few guys from the team are still studying there. ITMO is a source of new brain for Airalab. And the last but no less important is that the co-founder of Airalab Alexandr Kapitonov took part at WRO 2017 as a judge.

“International robotics competitions are held annually in November. Five years ago I started participating as a coach. During the last two years I am judging Open Category. Participants treat the project presentation in a very creative way and it’s always mind-blowing to look at creative activity. However robot structure is an important side. Different transmission and transformation of motion. It impresses! Many of robots are really autonomous and solve difficult tasks.

It’s getting common to use some parts of machine vision and cognitive services (object identification, voice recognition, neural networks and genetic algorithms) in projects. It means this generation will be ready to create autonomous robots which will exist and work in the same environment as a human.”

Alexandr Kapitonov

World Robot Olympiad (WRO 2017) was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So far the problem of human-machine interaction is getting more and more vital. Robots are surrounding us (in the finest sense of this word). But the more robots are involved in production process or delivering services the more mediators are necessary to be employed: to observe robots’ work, deal with finances, provide repairing to robots, etc. Since this research field is rather new it’s a challenging task to find information sources. For that reason we are keeping this blog. We in our turn addressed to Norbert Wiener and his work “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” to explore the problem.

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) is a founder of cybernetics. He served on the faculty in the Department of Mathematics at MIT from 1919 until his death. In 1963, he was awarded the National Medal of Science for his contributions to mathematics, engineering, and biological science. Wiener recounts that the origin of the ideas in this book is a ten-year-long series of meetings at the Harvard Medical School where medical scientists and physicians discussed scientific method with mathematicians, physicists and engineers. He used the interdisciplinary approach as he believed areas which were neglected being between various fields of researches and “belonging” to nobody were the most fruitful.

At the beginning of the war German aviation ruled the air and England could only defend. All that was because of rising speed of German aviation. That made o lot of scientists trouble their heads about improving air defense artillery. But classical approach to gun control had no sense anymore and it was necessary to build all the computing devices in controllers to provide estimation for a fire shot. Such computing devices were too complicated as the plane speed was compatible with the speed of anti-aircraft shell. That’s why it was necessary to shoot not spot-on but to some point where the anti-aircraft shell will meet the plane after some time according to the estimation. So the task of Norbert Wiener was to find some new method of predicting aircraft position.

Thus we came up to the interaction between a human and a machine. Each time when pilots understood that they were under fire they started falling back to maneuver cycles. If everything had depended only on a pilot his task would have consisted of reasonable opportunities usage. Anyway it wasn’t so as the pilot was in a plane flying at an exceedingly high speed. Any sudden change from the course could cause great pressure what in it’s turn would cause faint and the plane could fall apart. Also it was possible to control a plane only by moving its control surfaces and it took some time to develop a new regimen of flow. Even when it was fully developed, it could hardly change the acceleration of the plane. And finally being in such a stressed situation the pilot barely could think over maneuvers. Likely the pilot would implement the program learnt earlier. These facts made it reasonable to work out predicting methods.

Wiener saw a human-machine system in the interaction between pilots and planes. Our human-machine system involves direct economical relations between people and robots. In addition to studing human behaviour and cybernetics we consider market-based instruments as a way to control machine world in whole. We believed that it’s possible to apply economic theory heaving read the book of Ronald Coase“ The Firm, the Market, and the Law” which I’m going to dedicate a post in the nearest future as it’s the second partial of robot economics idea.

What our project is based on was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here I will write only on my own behalf as most part of our team has already participated in such events. Thus having covered thousand kilometers by plane I came face to face with a city on the coast of the Salish Sea. And all of that was in order to attend the conference IROS 2017 (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) which was held in Vancouver, Canada, September 24–28, 2017.

The theme of IROS 2017 is “Friendly People, Friendly Robots”. That is one of the reasons why we decided to take part in such an event. As you could notice our designers always draw robots for brochures, website and other kinds of illustrations friendly not because they just want it. That’s because Airalab wants to show people how to make friends with robots. Robots and humans are becoming increasingly integrated in various application domains. We work together in factories, hospitals and households, and share the road. This collaborative partnership of humans and robots gives rise to new technological challenges and significant research opportunities in developing friendly robots that can work effectively with, for, and around people.

IROS 2017 in my opinion is the greatest conference of this year dedicated to robotics. Furthermore that was the 30th anniversary of IROS what made this event even more special! Much attention was given to previous conferences. We heard a lot of acknowledgements and tuned into the neat of hunger for knowledge.

Hardly had I cleared my head as it was time to start out for work. Of course I couldn’t sleep during the first night because of the difference in time zones. Having possessed a cup of hot tea and built a pillow kingdom, I set my mind on working and tried to prepare myself for the barrage of potential questions from the participants of the conference.

Surprisingly awake we went to the Vancouver Convention Center. All the same we refueled with coffee just to be sure that we wouldn’t fall asleep somewhere in the middle of the exhibition hall. As all the logistical issues are not part of our duties we learnt that Airalab is a platinum sponsor of IROS 2017 only on arrival. We were pleasantly surprised with the scale of the space provided for our stand and started to grow roots.

On the first day there were only tutorials and workshops. The exhibition hall where we were located was just being prepared. Thus we had a chance to make friends with our neighbours. The next-door neighbours were MIT Press, Cambridge press and the company Universal robots. Most part of the exhibitors of course represented robots. Part of my work was to make up in my mind how AIRA can be useful for them and offer some ideas.

The second day started early with an inflow of participants. We didn’t get confused and started presenting our project. As a result in two hours the table was full of business cards from different people wishing to contact with our developers. We were so busy working that didn’t know what the conference consist of. At some moment a guy came up to us and told that there was a robot contest on the ground floor. Here we decided to get out of our nest and explore the building. It turned out that almost all the floors of the Convention Center were occupied for conference purposes. Also we attended a couple of interesting sessions.

The third day passed faster than a flash in the pan and the day X came. The day when I was substitute my colleague and present his report on “Robot Economics on Ethereum Blockchain: Tasks Formulation and Proposed Solutions”. Having arranged my thoughts and got up steam, I went to the Ballroom. The whole video of this report you can watch below or on our YouTube channel.

No matter where we are we are learning every day. During the conference I learnt how it’s to perform in front of a huge audience. Certainly, I also learnt a lot of new information in the field of robotics.

IROS 2017, Vancouver, Canada was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the projects being based on the technological concept of AIRA (Autonomous Intelligent Robot Agent) is the project Drone Employee. It involves drone fleet management. This project is also based on using Ethereum and smart contracts.

There is a set of problems that nobody on the drone market pays attention to. Autonomous flight is only one part of a fully autonomous drone market. Drones should also have economic autonomy, which brings us to the concept of “hiring a drone”. The concept “hiring a drone” means two things:

First, it flies without a human pilot. For that, they have an air traffic control system that validates all routes with Ethereum blockchain to ensure highest safety standards.

And second, drones have economic autonomy and can accept payment or create contracts with partners. Drones package all supply chain of drone service in a smart contract which release business owners from pain in the neck!

The idea is that drones should act as a human Employee: it will accept the order from the client, arranging the mission itself, registering the route with the regulator, buying insurance and so on. The supply chain of a drone mission is complex and also various a lot, depending on climate conditions, time of the day and other factors. Using smart contracts developed by Airalab, Drone Employee can empower any off-the-shelf drone, such as DJI and 3DR, with economic capabilities that are necessary for fully autonomous drone market.

I had a wonderful opportunity to arrange an interview via skype with the CMO of Drone Employee Vitaly Bulatov. He provided detailed answers to my questions, which I hope will interest you. The video is available for watching on our channel. Make yourself comfortable, follow the link and enjoy the video!

Renting vs. buying was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First visit to the dentist, first car, first date, first day at new work. Exciting. Sweaty palms because of worrying. Emotions are running high. We felt nervous too organizing the first-ever conference. Will everything work out well? Will everyone be pleased? Positive feedback, smiles, gratitudes and kind words. That’s what makes me proudly proclaim that we have succeeded!

No later than on August 25th a two-day event dedicated to the BlockChain Community was off. The conference was held on the bank of the river Volga between Togliatti and Samara. Airalab was originated there and in deference to the founders of Airalab our guests went there from different cities of Russia.

The conference followed the best traditions of such events: speeches along with presentations, open discussions, coffee breaks with debates, cultural program and talks about BlockChain Technologies at the campfire far into the night.

A lot of guests came to the tourist center. However they not only had a rest and enjoyed the speeches prepared for them but also contributed to conference program. Sergey Klochanov, an Agile-coach from Sberbank delivered a speech about the process of making decisions. Denis Soldatov from Parity Technologies impressed us having prepared three presentations on the experience of Gitlab CI implementation in cross-platform application development, WebAssembly and Blockchain cooperation and Polkadot. He was not the only representative from Parity Technologies. We also listened to his colleague Nicolai Volf.

Certainly there were reports from the members of Airalab. I will be brief in saying as I am planning to make a few more articles on these reports. Our CEO, Sergey Lonshakov, told a little about robotics history, gave an intro to management of machine world, shared his opinion about how robot economics would work and revealed the details about AIRA project organization and development. Then the progressor of Airalab, Alexandr Kapitonov, reported about what and where you should study to program robot economics, about his main work at ITMO University, said a few words about how much Airalab did this summer and told us what the team is going to do this autumn. After that Alexandr Krupenkin, who is a developer of AIRA project, captured our attention. He provided the introduction to robonomics programming. Also he described the structure of AIRA development — what’s now and what will be achieved in upcoming releases.

Going forward our partner-company Nekta informed us about the conception of smart cities and presented their IoT technology. Afterwards, we got to know about the next project based on AIRA technology — Aira Car Insurance, presented by our college Taras Emilyanenko. He offered an interesting solution to car insurance, which guaranties not only security and transparency of insurance information, but also it registers car crash details and allows automating the process of insurance payments. A representative of Kuka highlighted the history of the company and emphasized the tendency to automation and digitalization of every day processes. Airalab has a German advisor from Baker McKenzie, who could not fail to make a visit. Max Gutbrod disclosed his opinion on robot economics against the background as a lawyer. Finally Artem Yakovlev presented us the conception of neo-institutional economics.

We were visited by other partner-companies. Drone Employee arranged leisure activity in robotics style. The guys from this company brought a couple of drones as well as goggles dji. To begin with they filmed drone flights over the suburbs of the tourist center and got a selfie of the participants. Besides, anyone could put on these glasses and take a flight himself over the surroundings controlling the drone only moving the head.

Another partner-company of ours, GoldMint, presented their project named CustodyBot, for which our technology is used. Within the framework of the project, the task of creating a device connected to BlockChain for storing and assessing gold valuables is being solved.

I can’t shy away from the speech of our industrial engineer, Alisher Khasanov. The members of Airalab team has already assembled the first model of AIRA, a train. Alisher took it a step further and now he is totally preoccupied with working at a bigger model, which will illustrate an automated container shipping.

In addition, we witnessed an interesting project of Dmitri Marfin — “Scientific theatre of fantastic”. Having served at the theater for 25 years, he brings back to the memory of his grandfather who cultivated in him love to engineering and machinery. Dmitri is striving to pursue his idea. Plenty of films show robots as a bad guy. Here our team and Dmitri share one view. Within the work, he wishes to push a common man closer to the machine world just like us.

Don’t forget to watch a short video about the event. In half of week, we will publish a detailed report about Robonomics 2017 on our channel.

Robonomics Conference 2017. Our first experience was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s not a time consuming task to replace simple job positions. However, what about financial advisors, sell-side analysts and marketers? How can such a factory analyze what people need and take decisions in terms of further production? Itself? In no way. That’s where AIRA comes in.

Responsive robot economics is the answer. Rather detailed information about it was supplied in my previous post. In view of this, I will move from theory to practice. The Airalab team is developing responsive robot economics and is testing the results for a train. This train exemplifies a “lights-out”-manufacturing. As you can see below there are two circles, which in turn present two test markets.

The train is controlled by its AIRA instance, which follows the trends of these markets. Those ones who have AIR tokens can buy futures either at the market A or at the market B. This is market assessment. The market A is illustrated in the circle A. The circle B demonstrates the market B. AIRA sends the train to that market where the latest futures purchase was at the higher price. To control the train you have to install the extension metamask and register there. Then you have to choose the test network KOVAN. As for today, it’s a game for anyone who feels like. To join this game you should have AIR tokens. For this write the Airalab team in Telegram, having specified your address in the test network KOVAN and the members of Airalab will send you AIR tokens.

Let’s see how all of it works. Airalab uses dApp to allow access to the train. As I mentioned above there are two markets where you can buy futures. Speculate in the market B and make the train change the circle: if the latest transaction at the market A is 12 AIR tokens for futures and the latest transaction at the market B is 8 AIR tokens the train will move in the circle A. Make a transaction at the market B with a stock not lower than 13 air tokens and watch by the camera how the train will make the switch and go to the circle B.

If you choose to head over to the market B you will see your balance of futures B and AIR tokens. You set the limits of AIR token and futures which you will be allowed to use at the market later yourself. When you have enlarged your limit for trading, you are ready to conclude a purchase. In the bottom of the picture, there are orders for sale and orders for purchase, which are possible to be bought. You can either to add new orders, buy or sell them.

The game shows how an Aira instance can control a robot connected to it basing on the market figures existing in Ethereum Blockchain.

A big story of a little train was originally published in Robonomics Network by Airalab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.