Swarm Robotics meets Blockchain to deploy Surveillance missions

Abstract

Swarm Robotics can be used in many applications. But they suffer from certain limitations that make them undesirable in Surveillance applications. Among their limitations is the absence of scalability and security. Currently, these robots do not have framework that allows it to communicate with each other to execute missions autonomously and transparently. Blockchain is the new technology for distributed autonomous systems by providing set of computer nodes for data storage and distribution among the nodes in the system. Each participating node can protect and validate the data in the blockchain system. No modifications can be performed on the data records due to the fact that it is been watched by all the users. Based on the blockchain features, we focus on this research how blockchain applications can make swarm robots securely connected using Ethereum smart contracts. Starting with surveillance missions deployment task, we propose a decentralized application (DApp) for that. Then, blockchain is used by the swarms to establish the Ethereum private networks that allows them to communicate and carry out tasks. We set a test swarm robotics system and evaluate the blockchain for its performance, scalability, recoverability, and responsiveness. In conclusion, we found that blockchain enables a swarm to be globally securely connected, but there are still need for performance enhancement.