A Survey of Applications of Blockchain in Collective Decision-Making Scenarios in Swarm Robotics

Abstract

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that was introduced to decentralize monetary systems. However, with time, the applications of blockchain in different realms have been identified. Swarm robotics is a field that combines swarm intelligence and robotics to solve real-world problems that cannot be solved by monolithic robots. Collective decision-making is one of the major behaviors implemented by swarm robotics. This study analyzes existing literature on the applications of blockchain in the collective decision-making scenarios in swarm robotics. Consequently, this study introduces a novel taxonomy to study the different applications effectively. The taxonomy categorizes existing literature into (i) application of blockchain in other areas of swarm robotics, (ii) application of blockchain in continuous collective decision-making scenarios, (iii) application of blockchain in discrete collective decision-making scenarios, (iv) application of blockchain in other discrete collective decision-making scenarios, and (v) application of blockchain in the collective perception scenario. Finally, the limitations of existing work such as excessive resource consumption and violation of swarm robotics principles are discussed.