Secure onboarding enables increased automation and optimisation

An important feature of Eclipse Arrowhead local clouds is that they are secure and self-contained, but they also need to be dynamic enough to allow interaction with new devices. The Eclipse Arrowhead Youtube channel features a demonstration of how a secure onboarding procedure can be used to allow fully automatic use of a charging station by an electric vehicle.

When a new device with a secure element wants to interact with an Eclipse Arrowhead local cloud it is important to establish a chain of trust that includes the device as well as its hosted applications and services. In the demonstration, an electric vehicle is able to access a charging station within a local cloud by sending an onboarding request once it is in wi-fi range. When secure onboarding is completed the vehicle receives an onboarding certificate which is used to register it as a new device. This is in turn used to register a device certificate, which is used to register systems hosted by the device, and a systems certificate which is used to register corresponding services. 

The result in the demonstration is a fully automatic use of the charging station to create an optimised and individualised charging session without the need for manual identification such as RFID or a mobile app. The demonstration uses an RFID reader and a chip to trigger the charging session. In real-world industrial scenarios the trigger could be released by distance sensors, weight sensors or by cameras. 

The secure onboarding procedure is available at the Eclipse Arrowhead local cloud implemented at the University of Applied Sciences Burgenland, Austria. 

You can watch the full demonstration here.

Presented in cooperation with Productive 4.0