Blockchain-inspired Event Recording System for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles are capable of sensing their environment and navigating without any human inputs. However, when autonomous vehicles are involved in accidents between themselves or with human subjects, liability must be indubitably decided based on accident forensics. This paper proposes a blockchain-inspired event recording system for autonomous vehicles. Due to the inefficiency and limited usage of certain blockchain features designed for the traditional cryptocurrency applications, we design a new "proof of event" mechanism to achieve indisputable accident forensics by ensuring that event information is trustable and verifiable. Specifically, we propose a dynamic federation consensus scheme to verify and confirm the new block of event data in an efficient way without any central authority. The security capability of the proposed scheme is also analyzed against different threat and attack models.