Logistics 4.0: Securing High Value Goods using Self-Protecting Edge Computer

Logistics 4.0 aims to create, design and develop tiny sensor-tracking systems that attach directly to objects. The project aims to advance IoT technologies to better protect high-value goods by providing environment, transit behaviours, and wide-area real-time location data. These devices protect the object and can also protect themselves. Asset tracking allows companies to optimise supply chains and logistics operations to deliver more goods. For example, real-time tracking data leads to decreased fuel and storage costs, and inventory automation frees up employees, and improves compliance reporting. Current solutions are expensive, not-fit-for-purpose and unable to unobtrusively track objects in near real-time. Such systems themselves are vulnerable to security issues and this has yet to be studied and solved. Research is conducted through 3 themes: “Design for Trust”, “Technical Co-Design” and “Law, Ethics and Risk” covering security from different angles. Though the focus is on high value goods, specifically art, the AI/systems/algorithms/protocols that operate at the Edge not only apply to other goods, but their advances will provide a step-change to the security/reliability of IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems generally.