Blockchain-Powered Collaboration in Heterogeneous Swarms of Robots

Queralta, Jorge Peña; Westerlund, Tomi

doi:10.48550/arxiv.1912.01711

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In heterogeneous multi-robot systems, optimizing the amount and type of data shared between robots with different sensing capabilities and computational resources is a key challenge, where smart contracts can be used for ranking data quality and managing computational and networking resources. [26]. A blockchainbased framework for collaborative edge knowledge inference for edge-assisted multi-robot systems was presented by Li et al [10].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Managing Industrial Robot Fleets with Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain and ROS 2

Salimi¹,

Queralta²,

Westerlund³

2022

Preprint

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Trust is increasingly becoming a key consideration in the design of autonomous robotic systems. In industrial applications, security and trust in the system are requirements for widespread adoption. Blockchain technologies have emerged as a potential solution to address identity management and secure data aggregation and control. However, the vast majority of works to date utilize Ethereum and smart contracts that are not scalable or well suited for industrial applications. This paper presents what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first integration of ROS 2 with the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. With a framework that leverages Fabric smart contracts and ROS 2 through a Go application, we delve into the potential of using blockchain for controlling robots, and gathering and processing their data. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework to an inventory management use-case where different robots are used to detect objects of interest in a given area. Designed to meet the requirements of distributed robotic systems, we show that the performance of the robots is not impacted significantly by the blockchain layer. At the same time, we provide examples for developing other applications that integrate Fabric smart contracts with ROS 2. Our results pave the way for further adoption of blockchain technologies in autonomous robotic systems for building trustable data sharing.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Managing Industrial Robot Fleets with Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain and ROS 2

Salimi¹,

Queralta²,

Westerlund³

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In many scenarios, centralized control is not practical, and robots have to communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer manner. Managing multi-robot collaboration for different purposes by using blockchain is essential to perform specific tasks effectively and efficiently in real-time [46]. In [14], the authors presented the benefits of integrating blockchain into a multi-robot system, including security, distributed decision making, robots, behavior differentiation, and new business models.…”

Section: B Contribution and Scopementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors of [78] explained the development of intelligent multi-robot priority to perform various tasks autonomously. The collaboration of heterogenous robots shares sensitive information among them of the same environment [79]. Furthermore, the tasks of swarm robots need to a collective decision, in which decision-making issues are divided into task allocation and consensus achievement [80].…”

Section: Blockchain For Multi-robot Collaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blockchain-Empowered Multi-Robot Collaboration to Fight COVID-19 and Future Pandemics

Alsamhi

Lee

2021

IEEE Access

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This conceptual paper overviews how blockchain technology is involving the operation of multi-robot collaboration for combating COVID-19 and future pandemics. Robots are a promising technology for providing many tasks such as spraying, disinfection, cleaning, treating, detecting high body temperature/mask absence, and delivering goods and medical supplies experiencing an epidemic COVID-19. For combating COVID-19, many heterogeneous and homogenous robots are required to perform different tasks for supporting different purposes in the quarantine area. Managmnt and decentralizing multi-robot play a vital role in combating COVID-19 by reducing human interaction, monitoring, delivering goods. Blockchain technology can manage multi-robot collaboration in a decentralized fashion, improve the interaction among them to exchange information, share representation, share goals, and trust. We highlight the challenges and provide the tactical solutions enabled by integrating blockchain and multi-robot collaboration to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed conceptual framework can increase the intelligence, decentralization, and autonomous operations of connected multi-robot collaboration in the blockchain network. We overview blockchain potential benefits to defining a framework of multi-robot collaboration applications to combat COVID-19 epidemics such as monitoring and outdoor and hospital End to End (E2E) delivery systems. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of integrated blockchain, multi-robot collaboration, and the Internet of Things (IoT) for combating COVID-19 and future pandemics.

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“…Distributed ledger technologies have multiple applications in multi-robot systems and distributed autonomous systems. Blockchain technology, in particular, has been applied to robot swarms able to deal with byzantine agents [69], for sharing computational and communication resources [70], but also for privacycritical applications [71,72]. The distributed consensus algorithms in DLTs, the auditability of operations and the built-in encryption, among others, aid in designing more secure and privacy-preserving systems at the edge [73].…”

Section: Synergies Between Federated Learning and Distributed Ledger ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of Federated Learning at the Edge and Distributed Ledger Technologies for Robotic and Autonomous Systems

Xianjia,

Queralta,

Heikkonen

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Autonomous systems are becoming inherently ubiquitous with the advancements of computing and communication solutions enabling low-latency offloading and real-time collaboration of distributed devices. Decentralized technologies with blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are playing a key role. At the same time, advances in deep learning (DL) have significantly raised the degree of autonomy and level of intelligence of robotic and autonomous systems. While these technological revolutions were taking place, raising concerns in terms of data security and end-user privacy has become an inescapable research consideration. Federated learning (FL) is a promising solution to privacy-preserving DL at the edge, with an inherently distributed nature by learning on isolated data islands and communicating only model updates. However, FL by itself does not provide the levels of security and robustness required by today's standards in distributed autonomous systems. This survey covers applications of FL to autonomous robots, analyzes the role of DLT and FL for these systems, and introduces the key background concepts and considerations in current research.

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Blockchain-Powered Collaboration in Heterogeneous Swarms of Robots

Cited by 8 publications

References 37 publications

Towards Managing Industrial Robot Fleets with Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain and ROS 2

Towards Managing Industrial Robot Fleets with Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain and ROS 2

Blockchain-Empowered Multi-Robot Collaboration to Fight COVID-19 and Future Pandemics

An Overview of Federated Learning at the Edge and Distributed Ledger Technologies for Robotic and Autonomous Systems

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