6G and Onward to Next G

CHAPTER 7From Robonomics to Tokenomics

“There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life ‐ reciprocity.”

CONFUCIUS(551 BC–479 BC)

7.1 Robonomics

This chapter focuses on the emerging field of robonomics, which studies the sociotechnical impact of blockchain technologies on social human–robot interaction (sHRI), behavioral economics, behavioral game theory, and cryptocurrencies (both coins and tokens) for the social integration of robots into human society. Robonomics involves persuasive robotics, whereby a physical or virtual robotic agent is used as enforcer or supervisor of human behavior modification via psychological rewards in addition to tangible rewards [1].

Advanced blockchain technologies such as oracles enable the on‐chaining of blockchain‐external off‐chain information stemming from human users. In doing so, they leverage on human intelligence rather than machine learning only. Toward this end, we investigate the widely studied trust game of behavioral economics in a blockchain context, paying close attention to the importance of developing efficient cooperation and coordination technologies. After identifying open research challenges of blockchain‐enabled implementations of the trust game, we first develop a smart contract that replaces the experimenter in the middle between trustor and trustee and demonstrate experimentally that a social efficiency of up to 100% can be achieved by using deposits to enhance both trust and trustworthiness. ...