Privacy Protection for Cloud‐Based Robotic Networks

Abstract

In cloud robotics where robots are interconnected by local and cloud network, robots interact and cooperate with other remote robots and such robot group activity may involve dynamic registration and deregistration of foreign robots into the group. In such cases, the security and privacy for robotic data and activities become a sensitive issue. Security becomes complex if a cloud robot group involves various robotic roles/attributes as part of their access control policies and if such policies and role/attribute assignment rules are subject to dynamic changes. Most of all, the security breach in cloud robots may lead to irrevocable disasters in the physical world. To this end, we propose a cloud robot community model, which is based on Policy‐based Establishment of Ad hoc Communities (PEACE) architecture, extended by attribute‐based encryption (ABE) scheme. The proposed model allows robots to join a robot community, assigns a set of attributes, and enforces service access control policies by using ABE keys as credentials. The proposed cloud robot community policy is flexible, scalable, and its ABE‐based service access control enhances the privacy of the robots in the community.