Real-Time Coordination of a Foraging Robot Swarm Using Blockchain Smart Contracts

Pacheco, Alexandre; Strobel, Volker; Reina, Andreagiovanni; Dorigo, Marco

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-20176-9_16

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…We have chosen the default value (15 s) for the minimum block time. Setting the block time is a trade-off: A lower block time prevents delays if the blockchain is to be used for real-time coordination (35). However, it also increases the probability of blockchain forks, which can lead to (temporary) conflicting information and an increase in communication overhead.…”

Section: Time Delaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This PDF file includes: Supplementary Results Supplementary Discussion Supplementary Methods Fig. S1 References (51)(52)(53)(54)…”

Section: Performance Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Initially, the combination of swarm robotics and blockchain technology was proposed at the conceptual level by describing various potential applications (such as data integrity, consensus agreement, and secure communication) (30) but without implementation or empirical testing. More recently, there have been several proofs of concept in which robot swarms and other multirobot systems interacted via smart contracts (19,(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36). The main contributions of these simulation studies were to show that smart contracts can coordinate the robots' behavior and can successfully neutralize Byzantine robots, whereas existing consensus protocols (37)(38)(39) might break down in the presence of even a single Byzantine robot.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Robot swarms neutralize harmful Byzantine robots using a blockchain-based token economy

2023

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Through cooperation, robot swarms can perform tasks or solve problems that a single robot from the swarm could not perform/solve by itself. However, it has been shown that a single Byzantine robot (such as a malfunctioning or malicious robot) can disrupt the coordination strategy of the entire swarm. Therefore, a versatile swarm robotics framework that addresses security issues in inter-robot communication and coordination is urgently needed. Here, we show that security issues can be addressed by setting up a token economy between the robots. To create and maintain the token economy, we used blockchain technology, originally developed for the digital currency Bitcoin. The robots were given crypto tokens that allowed them to participate in the swarm’s security-critical activities. The token economy was regulated via a smart contract that decided how to distribute crypto tokens among the robots depending on their contributions. We designed the smart contract so that Byzantine robots soon ran out of crypto tokens and could therefore no longer influence the rest of the swarm. In experiments with up to 24 physical robots, we demonstrated that our smart contract approach worked: The robots could maintain blockchain networks, and a blockchain-based token economy could be used to neutralize the destructive actions of Byzantine robots in a collective-sensing scenario. In experiments with more than 100 simulated robots, we studied the scalability and long-term behavior of our approach. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility and viability of blockchain-based swarm robotics.

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Section: Time Delaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This PDF file includes: Supplementary Results Supplementary Discussion Supplementary Methods Fig. S1 References (51)(52)(53)(54)…”

Section: Performance Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%