"A Breakthrough in Security for Decentralized Multi-Robot Systems"

Researchers from Boston University and Northeastern University are developing security algorithms for Multi-Robot Systems (MRS). Recently, the team published a paper titled "Byzantine Resilience At Swarm-Scale: A Decentralized Blocklist Protocol From Inter-Robot Accusations." Professor Li, whose research focuses on safe, reliable, and secure systems, emphasizes that this challenge is difficult to tackle and does not cleanly fit into one field. Therefore, the team is composed of experts from different fields for this work. Professor Roberto Tron provides his knowledge of robotics, while Northeastern Professor Cristina Nita-Rotaru and her student Max von Hippel have experience in security for distributed systems. The researchers are focusing on robots in swarm settings. Byzantine faults are security threats that cause some robots in a swarm to behave in potentially arbitrary ways. Such faults could lead an MRS to malfunction in search-and-rescue (SAR) situations, hindering operations. The team developed a novel approach to Byzantine resilience in swarm settings called Decentralized Blocklist Protocol (DBP). The DBP algorithm is designed to provide continuous safety and reliability in an MRS. DBP adapts the system to enable uninterrupted functioning even in the presence of Byzantine robots by creating a blocklist through peer-to-peer (P2P) communication. This article continues to discuss the advancement made in the security of decentralized MRS.

Boston University reports "A Breakthrough in Security for Decentralized Multi-Robot Systems"