Fireplace, river, camp site and blockchain experiments: «Robonomics-2018» summer school on smart city development took place in Togliatti on Volga river bank. This year Airalab team, which focuses on the development a decentralised Ethereum platform Robonomics, created a “smart city” simulation — or better say, a “smart tent city” with autonomous p2p network — and gave everyone an opportunity to become its citizens. Three groups took part in the school’s activities, who managed to test their achievements in the field of sensor networks, industry 4.0 and mobile robotics. Such an unusual project is a result of three-years of experiments.

The first session of the school, which took part from 20 to 24h August in a major technopark “Zhigulevskaya dolina”, was intended for developers and engineers. They discussed ready solutions and projects and suggested their own ideas for the development of smart cities on the basis of blockchain technology.

The first day started with deployment of mesh-networks. By the end of the day, participants of the engineering intensive course started to communicate via IPFS pubsub protocol and exchanged a hash of “13th floor” movie exceeding 2 gigabytes.

The second day was dedicated to the deployment of a local Ethereum network and ether mining, as well as education on Truffle and demonstration of Robonomics smart contracts migration process to a new network. Remaining two days were just enough for connecting various sensors, drones and a 3D-printer to the “smart city” network.

The second “Robonomics” session, which took place from 24 to 26th August by the Volga dam on Kopylovo peninsula, gathered representatives of a wider audience, who had an opportunity to take part in round tables, testing, discussions and criticism of developed solutions. Even the power supply of the tent city was enabled by innovative technology: “Volga Engineering” company installed solar panels on the riverbank.

The school had some fun too, of course: two musical bands “Empathy” and “Liberia” came to perform at “Robonomics” and an impressive night drone light show took place at night over the Volga river.

Many projects including Evercity and Parity took part in the school alongside with Airalab.

The next plan is an online winter school. But alas, not on the beach!