Blockchain technology offers a fundamental solution to the problem of hacking robotic systems

Imagine a team of self-driving drones (drones) ، Equipped with advanced sensors (robots), and prepared to track fires, as soon as these robots detect a massive fire, they can provide a swarm of firefighting planes with the right direction, to immediately rush to the desired location.

But what would happen if one or more bots were hacked by some and started sending incorrect directions? How will these robots know that they have been given misleading directions, and keep them away from the real fire scene?

According to a study conducted by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology WITH, And Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, published today in Transaction on Robotics IEEE Blockchain technology can blockchain To act as a communication tool for a team of bots, with the goal of providing security and protection against such misinformation.

Blockchain technology provides a tamper-proof record of all transactions, which in this case represents the commands issued by the master bots to the dependent bots, which will eventually enable these bots to identify discrepancies in the information path.

Master bots use tokens to signal movements and add transactions to the chain, making it easy to spot any false signals.

Blockchain Technology: Beyond Cryptocurrencies

In addition, there will be potential for a communication system based on blockchain transactions, to limit the number of false signals that a hacked bot can spread, according to the lead author of the paper. Eduardo Castillo, researcher at the Institute Marie Curie And the colleague in MIT Media Lab.

Castillo says:

“In addition to cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology contains many things, which can create new ways of understanding security protocols.”

While blockchain technology is typically used as a secure ledger of cryptocurrencies, at its core it represents a list of data structures, known as blocks. Blocks, which are connected in series.

Each block contains information that it is meant to store, and "fragmentation" The information in the block, and this hashing is the process of converting a text string, into a set of unique numbers and letters.

Blockchain will stop hacking attempts

In this simulation based study, the information stored in each block is a set of directions, from master bot to slave bots. Affiliate bots can easily ignore modified directions.

By providing a permanent record of transactions, blockchain technology will allow affiliate bots to see all the directions given by the master bots, and see if they have been misled.

For example, if five master bots send messages directing the slave robots to move north, and only one master robot tells them to move west, then the slave robots can clearly ignore this anomaly.

Even if a bot moves westward by mistake, the misguided bot will eventually realize the error, when it compares its movements with transactions stored on the Blockchain.

Since each main bot has an equal and finite number of codes, researchers have developed algorithms to identify the largest number of false directives, which can come from malicious bots.

Castillo explains:

“Since we know how disinformation affects the system, we can calculate the maximum extent to which a swarm of aircraft is misled, so we can say, if you have bots with enough battery life, it doesn’t really matter who hacks the system, as they will eventually reach their target.”

In addition to allowing the system designer to estimate the battery life that the bots need to complete their task, the algorithms also enable the user, to determine how much memory is required to store the Blockchain, how many bots are required, and the length of the path they can walk, even if a certain percentage of the main bots are hacked, and turned to malicious.

“You can design your system with these trade-offs in mind, and make clear decisions about what you want to do with your system.”

In the future, Castillo hopes to develop work to create new security systems for bots, using transaction-based interactions, as he sees it as a way to build trust between humans and groups of bots, and explained:

“Even if some members of the system are hacked, it will not lead to the collapse of its entire infrastructure, which is the most important thing.”

It should be noted that the research paper was funded by Horizon 2020 of the European Union Research and Innovation, the City of Madrid, and the Fund MIT WITH International Science and Technology Initiatives.

The study witnessed the participation of a number of researchers such as Ernesto Jimenez, And Jose Luis Brissa from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.