A rental car company „Green&Blue cars“wants to sell mobility instead of just renting cars per hour/day. They want to start a new business: selling mobility. A customer buys mobility e.g. for three days. Everything is included e.g. fees for the parking houses (owned by a company “Berlin Parking”) and costs for gas or energy taken from energy-stations (owned by a company “Berlin Green Energy”).

Bob visits the city of Berlin. He goes to the counter of „Green&Blue cars“ and buys 3 days of mobility. He signs the contract and gets the key for the car. Now he is driving through the city center and wants to stop for sightseeing. He drives to a “Berlin Parking” house. When he wants to leave the parking house after a while a sensor at the gate recognizes and authenticates the identity of his rental car. As both companies “Green&Blue cars” and “Berlin Parking” have some mutual agreement the gate opens.

Bob recognizes that the battery of his car is low. The navigation system directs him to a “Berlin Green Energy” Station. When he arrives at the energy station his car is identitfied and authenticated. Bob loads the battery without any payment and goes on.

From the identity point of view we have several aspects here:

Bob is crossing domains of different companies. All these companies may have chosen different solutions, protocols and address and authentication schemes to manage their items.

The gate of “Berlin Parking” has to communicate with Bob’s car. At least in order to recognize “ok this car has a special contract so it’s good to go”. For communication we need communication endpoints/addresses for the gate and for the car. The endpoint for the gate could be: 10.0.0.78.88.9876.berlincenter.berlinparking.de (mixed address…public & “Berlin Parking” specific address URL) The endpoint for the car is in fact an IMEI (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity) of a mobile build in GSM unit e.g. #490154203237518#. Other rental car companies use the car-id taken from the CAN-BUS System (widely used system in car industry). Both companies have their special address scheme.

How to address items across different domains, namespaces and formats? (Extensible Resource Identifier OASIS XRI might be an approach….needs further discussion)

Bob is able to load the battery of his car or he can get gasoline without direct payment. It is really important that only cars of “Green&blue car” company get their fuel or energy without extra payment. So the car has to authenticate itself against the energy station.

How to provide authentication without Bob’s interaction? May be its possible to find a special solution for “Green&blue car” but what if tomorrow other rental car companies want to join? Is there something like a general authentication scheme for things?

“Green&blue car” is only allowed for gas up to a certain amount of money.

How to authorize things? (OAuth for Things?...)

The rental car company “Green&blue car” is allowed to check the status, location and certain statistics at any time. “Berlin Green Energy” is allowed to check the location of Bobs car in order to direct him to the nearest Energy station. There has to be a policy management deciding who is allowed for what?

I have the feeling we need an authorization framework here. (kind of UMA/OAuth thing?)