Towards Blockchain-based Multi-Agent Robotic Systems: Analysis, Classification and Applications

Abstract

Decentralization, immutability and transparency make of Blockchain one of the most innovative technology of recent years. This paper presents an overview of solutions based on Blockchain technology for multi-agent robotic systems, and provide an analysis and classification of this emerging field. The reasons for implementing Blockchain in a multi-robot network may be to increase the interaction efficiency between agents by providing more trusted information exchange, reaching a consensus in trustless conditions, assessing robot productivity or detecting performance problems, identifying intruders, allocating plans and tasks, deploying distributed solutions and joint missions. Blockchain-based applications are discussed to demonstrate how distributed ledger can be used to extend the number of research platforms and libraries for multi-agent robotic systems.

A Survey on Blockchain in Robotics: Issues, Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions

“…To provide the readers with a diverse knowledge of the existing research work that has been carried out in these recent years, the authors of this paper have provided an in-depth and comprehensive review of the latest studies carried out on working principles and applications of blockchain technology in various traits of the robotics field; this includes, but not limited to, the blockchain in distributed cooperative robots (Khan et al, 2018), multi-agent and swarm robots (Afanasyev et al, 2019;Ferrer, 2018;Miller and Gandhi, 2019;Du et al, 2020), UAVs (Alladi et al, 2020;Mehta et al, 2020) and service-oriented robots (Fukawa, 2020).…”

“…-✓ ----- Afanasyev et al (2019) Studies the classification of blockchain-based multi-agent robotic systems so as increase the number of research platforms and libraries for further analysis of these technologies. Additionally, inspects WSN, smart buildings, smart cities and Industry 4.0 concepts as a part of Multi-Agent Systems (MASs), which can utilize blockchain framework.…”

“…The entities, if operated in the centralized multi-robotic system, can cause major distress upon the user if being hacked or fed with malicious information. Blockchain provides an unalterable, decentralized, secure and trustworthy platform to enabling functionalities like coordination and allocation of individual tasks, path-planning and control system, and as resource platform (Afanasyev et al, 2019). Smart contracts and decentralized computing makes effects from byzantine entities negligible, and important features of blockchain to be clubbed with these systems.…”

Blockchain and Collaborative Intelligence based next generation Smart Toll Application

“…The paper also covers the challenges of using blockchain technology in practice particularly in the field of multi-agent systems and ends with future research directions. The paper [15] covers an overview of blockchain-based solutions for multi-agent robotic systems and also gives a classification and analysis of the technology. The paper also explains how the architectures, frameworks, and structures of blockchain technology can be used to solve the problems faced by the multi-agent robotic systems and cyber-physical systems.…”

A Machine to Machine Framework for the Charging of Electric Autonomous Vehicles

“…networked devices that can interact, exchange information and perform actions without any manual assistance of humans. For this to happen, the market should be able to offer appropriate charging services without involving humans [17,18,9,3].…”