Towards a Blockchain-Based Multi-UAV Surveillance System

Abstract

This study describes a blockchain-based multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (multi-UAV) surveillance framework that enables UAV coordination and financial exchange between system users. The objective of the system is to allow a set of Points-Of-Interest (POI) to be surveyed by a set of autonomous UAVs that cooperate to minimize the time between successive visits while exhibiting unpredictable behavior to prevent external agents from learning their movements. The system can be seen as a marketplace where the UAVs are the service providers and the POIs are the service seekers. This concept is based on a blockchain embedded on the UAVs and on some nodes on the ground, which has two main functionalities. The first one is to plan the route of each UAV through an efficient and computationally cheap game-theoretic decision algorithm implemented into a smart contract. The second one is to allow financial transactions between the system and its users, where the POIs subscribe to surveillance services by buying tokens. Conversely, the system pays the UAVs in tokens for the provided services. The first benchmarking experiments show that the IOTA blockchain is a potential blockchain candidate to be integrated in the UAV embedded system and that the chosen decentralized decision-making coordination strategy is efficient enough to fill the mission requirements while being computationally light.

Partition-Tolerant and Byzantine-Tolerant Decision Making for Distributed Robotic Systems With IOTA and ROS2

“…Other platforms have emerged that potentially solve some of these issues, such as Hyperledger Fabric [26] and IOTA [27]. These have already been explored in some works, albeit more limited experiments have been demonstrated [28], [14], [29].…”

“…Next-generation blockchain systems that are intrinsically based on DAGs, such as IOTA, are able to provide both scalability and security. For example, a surveillance system is presented in [14] that also tolerates partitioning within the network while maintaining secure consensus with IOTA. The research in [14] was carried out before smart contracts were developed for IOTA.…”

“…For example, a surveillance system is presented in [14] that also tolerates partitioning within the network while maintaining secure consensus with IOTA. The research in [14] was carried out before smart contracts were developed for IOTA. The IOTA foundation has now introduced IOTA smart contracts that run on chains over the core DAG structure.…”

“…Multiple works in the literature already show the potential of blockchain technology for managing byzantine behaviour or consensus in swarms of robots [12], [13]. In contrast to the majority of Ethereum-based systems, IOTA has already been identified as a solution to address these issues [14], but smart contracts have not been available until very recently.…”

Applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies in Robotics

“…Systems can be packed to enable an out of the box plug and play type scenario. Although increasing, a limited number of applications of ROS and DLT have been found including a ROS-Ethereum covenant bridging tool [49], ROS-Ethereum bridge for smart factories [33], a ROS2-Hyperledger Fabric application [50], and a Multyi-UAV system using ROS1 [51].…”