Secure and secret cooperation of robotic swarms by using Merkle trees

摘要

Swarm robotics systems are becoming an important component of both academic research and real-world applications. However, in order to reach widespread adoption, new models that ensure the secure cooperation of these systems need to be developed. This work proposes a novel model to encapsulate cooperative robotic missions in Merkle trees. With the proposed model, swarm operators can provide the blueprint of the swarm's mission without disclosing its raw data. In other words, data verification can be separated from data itself. We propose a system where robots in the swarm have to prove their integrity to their peers by exchanging cryptographic proofs. This work analyzes and tests the proposed approach for two different robotic missions: foraging (where robots modify the environment) and maze formation (where robots become part of the environment). In both missions, robots were able to cooperate and carry out sequential operations in the correct order without having explicit knowledge about the mission's high-level goals or objectives. The performance, communication costs, and information diversity requirements for the proposed approach are analyzed. Finally, conclusions are drawn and future work directions are suggested.