Blockchain primed for AI data sharing in predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance customers of industrial equipment producer Robert Bosch will soon be able to leverage blockchain to exchange data with peers without triggering privacy controls.

Blockchain relies on decentralized nodes to scatter blocks of decrypted information across multiple computers on a network, which together form a single authentic record that can’t be altered. The latest initiative is being led by Bosch’s Economy of Things unit and Fetch.ai, a developer of blockchain networks capable of hosting machine learning.

Trials will soon commence to evaluate the blockchain’s feasibility and effectiveness. Bosch and Fetch started their collaboration in 2019 and completed an initial pilot earlier this year.

Predictive maintenance enables artificial intelligence (AI) to learn from data produced from industrial devices and predict the likelihood of critical failures. While it has potential to reduce machinery downtime, Bosch and Fetch believe individual plants produce insufficient data to train the predictive AI from.

By implementing blockchain, Bosch expects clients to opt into sharing anonymized data with one another. That could enable machine learning without risk of sensitive information being leaked through cybersecurity breaches.

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