UAV Swarm Exploration With Byzantine Fault Tolerance

Abstract

Swarm robots need Byzantine fault tolerance to ensure their tasks can still be complete even if malfunctioning or malicious robots exist. Nevertheless, advancement in implementing Byzantine fault tolerance is not suitable for the UAV swarm exploration task. This study aims to contribute to this growing area of research. We presented an implementation of Byzantine fault tolerance for swarm robots, proposing a theoretically more effective and flexible approach than previous approaches. We integrated a multi-agent foraging algorithm with a BFT consensus algorithm for the UAV swarm exploration task, providing a method that can be generalized to similar multi-agent cooperative tasks. We developed a ROS-based framework to incorporate such algorithms into swarm robots, facilitating robotics development and testing. Empirical results of the UAV swarm exploration task imply our approach’s advantages.