Ovidiu Vermesan, Reiner John, Patrick Pype, G. H. O. Daalderop · 11 authors
The automotive sector digitalization accelerates the technology convergence of perception, computing processing, connectivity, propulsion, and data fusion for electric connected autonomous and shared (ECAS) vehicles. This brings cutting-edge computing paradigms with embedded cognitive capabilities into vehicle domains and data infrastructure to provide holistic intrinsic and extrinsic intelligence for new mobility applications. Digital technologies are a significant enabler in achieving the sustainability goals of the green transformation of the mobility and transportation sectors. Innovation occurs predominantly in ECAS vehicles’ architecture, operations, intelligent functions, and automotive digital infrastructure. The traditional ownership model is moving toward multimodal and shared mobility services. The ECAS vehicle’s technology allows for the development of virtual automotive functions that run on shared hardware platforms with data unlocking value, and for introducing new, shared computing-based automotive features. Facilitating vehicle automation, vehicle electrification, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is accomplished by the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), cellular/wireless connectivity, edge computing, the Internet of things (IoT), the Internet of intelligent things (IoIT), digital twins (DTs), virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). Vehicles become more intelligent, connected, functioning as edge micro servers on wheels, powered by sensors/actuators, hardware (HW), software (SW) and smart virtual functions that are integrated into the digital infrastructure. Electrification, automation, connectivity, digitalization, decarbonization, decentralization, and standardization are the main drivers that unlock intelligent vehicles' potential for sustainable green mobility applications. ECAS vehicles act as autonomous agents using swarm intelligence to communicate and exchange information, either directly or indirectly, with each other and the infrastructure, accessing independent services such as energy, high-definition maps, routes, infrastructure information, traffic lights, tolls, parking (micropayments), and finding emergent/intelligent solutions. The article gives an overview of the advances in AI technologies and applications to realize intelligent functions and optimize vehicle performance, control, and decision-making for future ECAS vehicles to support the acceleration of deployment in various mobility scenarios. ECAS vehicles, systems, sub-systems, and components are subjected to stringent regulatory frameworks, which set rigorous requirements for autonomous vehicles. An in-depth assessment of existing standards, regulations, and laws, including a thorough gap analysis, is required. Global guidelines must be provided on how to fulfill the requirements. ECAS vehicle technology trustworthiness, including AI-based HW/SW and algorithms, is necessary for developing ECAS systems across the entire automotive ecosystem. The safety and transparency of AI-based technology and the explainability of the purpose, use, benefits, and limitations of AI systems are critical for fulfilling trustworthiness requirements. The article presents ECAS vehicles’ evolution toward domain controller, zonal vehicle, and federated vehicle/edge/cloud-centric based on distributed intelligence in the vehicle and infrastructure level architectures and the role of AI techniques and methods to implement the different autonomous driving and optimization functions for sustainable green mobility.
Milan Groshev, Jorge Martín‐Pérez, Kiril Antevski, Antonio de la Oliva · 5 authors
Edge computing have received considerable attention as a promising candidate for the evolution of robotic systems. In this work, we propose COTORRA, an Edge driven robotic testbed that combines context information with robot sensor data to validate innovative concepts for robotic systems prior to being applied in a production environment. We have tested COTORRA in a controlled university environment as an easy applicable, serverless, and modular testbed on top of commodity network infrastructure. COTORRA supports pluggable robotic applications. To verify its feasibility and assess its performance, we ran a set of experiments that show how autonomous navigation applications can achieve target latencies bellow 15 ms, and perform an inter-domain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) federation within 19 seconds.
Vyacheslav Petrenko, Фариза Тебуева, Sergey Ryabtsev, Igor Struchkov
Abstract The technological development and popularity of swarm robotics actualizes the issues of increasing the efficiency and safety of consensus achievement between the swarm elements. Currently, most studies have little or no regard for information security issues when consensus achievement among swarm elements in the presence of robots with arbitrarily malfunctioning or malicious behavior. However, in many practical applications, when exploring the external environment, a swarm of one or more malicious robots may be sufficient to allow the current consensus mechanisms to fail. One of the promising ways to ensure information security in collective decision-making is the use of blockchain technology as a distributed system designed to work in conditions of lack of trust between the parties. The use of distributed ledger technologies, due to their complexity, leads to reducing efficiency in consensus achievement. The aim of the work is to improve the safety of the process of consensus achievement in swarms of robots through the use of blockchain technology in collective design making while maintaining the effectiveness of consensus achievement between robots. Increasing the safety of decision-making by a swarm will increase the stability and the possibilities of practical application of swarm robotic systems for solving problems in aggressive environments.
Benjamin Breiling, Bernhard Dieber, Martin Pinzger, Stefan Raß
With the growing popularity of robots, the development of robot applications is subject to an ever increasing number of additional requirements from e.g., safety, legal and ethical sides. The certification of an application for compliance to such requirements is an essential step in the development of a robot program. However, at this point in time it must be ensured that the integrity of this program is preserved meaning that no intentional or unintentional modifications happen to the program until the robot executes it. Based on the abstraction of robot programs as workflows we present in this work a cryptography-powered distributed infrastructure for the preservation of robot workflows. A client composes a robot program and once it is accepted a separate entity provides a digital signature for the workflow and its parameters which can be verified by the robot before executing it. We demonstrate a real-world implementation of this infrastructure using a mobile manipulator and its software stack. We also provide an outlook on the integration of this work into our larger undertaking to provide a distributed ledger-based compliant robot application development environment.
The active introduction of robotics swarm systems into life brings the issues of their information security up to date. Known security approaches often do not take into account the peculiarities of the implementation of swarm systems, such as collective design-making, and only consider the presence of Byzantine robots with a strategy of behavior consisting in voting against a majority when a consensus is reached. The aim of this work is to increase the security of the collective design-making process in a swarm robotics system from the imposition of false and ineffective alternatives by Byzantine robots with a random behavior strategy. It is proposed to use an approach based on the use of a distributed ledger and analysis of deviations in the process of collective design-making, which will allow identifying and isolating harmful effects. The solution to the problem of detecting Byzantine robots is based on the application of the criterion of the degree of confidence of a robot in choosing an alternative when a consensus is reached by the swarm system and is based on the assumption that the distribution of the degree of confidence of a Byzantine robot due to ignoring the parameters of the external environment and voting for random alternatives is significantly different from the behavior an ordinary robot. The elements of novelty of the presented solution include the use of the degree of confidence criterion to ensure the safety of collective design-making and the ability to take into account various strategies of behavior of Byzantine robots. The use of the presented solution makes it possible to increase the efficiency of reaching consensus by a swarm robotics system in the presence of Byzantine robots. The simulation for a swarm of 20 robots, including 5 Byzantine ones with random behavior, showed an increase in the probability of correctly reaching a consensus by 12.5%. The practical significance of the presented solutions lies in the possibility of ensuring the stability of reaching consensus by a swarm robotics system in the presence of robots with harmful behavior.
Animals team up to collectively address challenges they could not overcome individually. Several species self-organize into large groups to leverage vital behaviors such as foraging, construction, or predator evasion. Ants, for instance, find shortest paths to food resources by depositing pheromones, bees indicate direction and distance to flower meadows through waggle dances in the hive, and fish display evasive maneuvers to escape predators. These three examples illustrate a collective problem-solving ability that leverages the cognition and actions of individually limited organisms. With the advancement of robotics and automation, engineered multi-agent systems have been inspired to achieve similarly high degrees of scalable, robust, and adaptable autonomy through decentralized and dynamic coordination. Scientists have demonstrated ground-based collective transport, construction, and self-assembly, in some cases with several hundred robots. Multiple aerial swarms fly complex maneuvers, some of them even with little external assistance. Small robot teams, although with limited autonomy, have been engaged to assist in search and rescue missions at sea, sample oceanic data, and find unknown deep-sea species. Overall however, robot swarms have been most successfully demonstrated in two-dimensional (2D) space or with partial assistance from central controllers and external tracking. In addition, many more demonstrations of self-organized collectives exist above-ground as opposed to the less explored underwater domain, which is particularly challenging because it often precludes traditional communication methods such as radio and GPS signals. Few underwater swarms exist and achieve limited coordination complexity and scale because they rely on explicit message passing. In this dissertation, I introduce a novel underwater robot collective, the Blueswarm, which realizes full 3D spatiotemporal coordination without any external assistance. Each Bluebot is equipped with four independently controllable fins and two wide-angle lens cameras for 3D locomotion and perception. The vision system is complemented by three LEDs, which encode information about direction, distance and heading, and facilitate implicit coordination among robots. In the bioinspired design process, I pursued simplicity in both hardware and software to enable real-time onboard multi-robot tracking for local decision making followed by swift action. Blueswarm is the first 3D underwater collective that uses only local implicit vision-based coordination to self-organize. Inspired by the dynamic and agile coordination of fish, I show that complex and dynamic 3D collective behaviors — synchrony, aggregation-dispersion, dynamic circle formation, search-capture, and escape — can be achieved by sensing minimal, noisy impressions of neighbors without any centralized intervention. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first significant demonstration of unsupervised and autonomous 3D collective coordination underwater. Accompanied by a custom simulator, the Blueswarm platform gives researchers a much-needed tool to systematically develop and test algorithms for self-organzied 3D collective behaviors in the laboratory. The results of this dissertation provide insights into the power of implicit coordination and advance the potential for future underwater robots that display collective capabilities on par with fish schools for applications such as environmental monitoring and search in coral reefs and coastal environments. In addition, the Bluebots are also well suited as an experimental testbed for investigating natural collective behaviors and biomimicry, for example, studying the energy savings for different formations in schooling fish or the performance landscape of aquatic propulsion with a diverse set of caudal fins.
Saint Petersburg SPIIRAS, A.V. Smirnov, Nikolay Teslya, Saint Petersburg SPIIRAS
During a common goal achieving, a coalition of autonomous robots may face a situation that requires prompt decision-making in order to maintain an initially agreed action plan. In this case, it is proposed to use adaptive decentralized planning mechanisms based on the model of socio-inspired self-organization and implemented using the original protocol ofnegotiations between robots. Negotiations are carried out through the execution of smart contracts that process robots' proposalsюThe contracts are storing and distributing in a distributed ledger implemented with the HyperLedger Fabric platform.
Open access
Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence
Advanced Research in Systems and Signal Processing
Abstract Fog robotics is an entirely new direction in the robotic field, inspired by the fogcomputing concept. Some fog architectures have been developed for robots groups and robot swarms, yet, to the best of our knowledge, there are no developed mechanisms of data sharing and replication in such structures. So, they are in the focus of this paper. The distributed ledger-based architecture for the fog robot servers is considered and described, as well as some models have been developed to estimate the time needed for data sharing. Simulation results show the expediency of consensus methods usage for distributed ledger-based.
Kiril Antevski, Milan Groshev, Gabriele Baldoni, Carlos J. Bernardos
The concept of federation in 5G and NFV networks aims to provide orchestration of services across multiple administrative domains. Edge robotics, as a field of robotics, implements the robot control on the network edge by relying on low-latency and reliable access connectivity. In this paper, we propose a solution that enables Edge robotics service to expand its service footprint or access coverage over multiple administrative domains. We propose application of Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) for the federation procedures to enable private, secure and trusty interactions between undisclosed administrative domains. The solution is applied on a real-case Edge robotics experimental scenario. The results show that it takes around 19 seconds to deploy & federate a Edge robotics service in an external/anonymous domain without any service down-time.
Abdeljalil Beniiche, Amin Ebrahimzadeh, Martin Maier
Today’s Internet powered by decentralised blockchain technology is bringing us a true peer-to-peer platform that has the potential to go far beyond digital currencies. A blockchain technology of particular interest is Ethereum, which provides capabilities that Bitcoin lacked, to enable new models of distributed ownership and help realise future techno-social systems such as the Tactile Internet, the next evolutionary leap of the Internet of Things (IoT), by adding a new dimension to human-to-machine interaction. After explaining the commonalities and specific differences between Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains, we first provide an up-to-date survey on how Ethereum can be used for realising the emerging blockchain IoT (B-IoT), briefly reviewing recent progress and open challenges. We then elaborate on how specific Ethereum blockchain technologies may be leveraged to realise future techno-social systems, notably the Tactile Internet, which at present is yet unclear in many ways how it would work. Towards this end, we explore the salient features that set Ethereum apart from other blockchains, including its symbiosis with other emerging key technologies such as artificial intelligence and robots as well as decentralised edge computing solutions, to let new hybrid forms of collaboration emerge among individuals benefitting from automation at the centre and humans at the edges.
Achieving efficient and reliable self-organization in groups of autonomous robots is a fundamental challenge in swarm robotics. Even simple states of collective motion, such as group translation or rotation, require nontrivial algorithms, sensors, and actuators to be achieved in real-world scenarios. We study here the capabilities and limitations in controlling experimental robot swarms of a decentralized control algorithm that only requires information on the positions of neighboring agents, and not on their headings. Using swarms of e-Puck robots, we implement this algorithm in experiments and show its ability to converge to self-organized collective translation or rotation, starting from a state with random orientations. Through a simple analytical calculation, we also unveil an essential limitation of the algorithm that produces small persistent oscillations of the aligned state, related to its marginal stability. By comparing predictions and measurements, we compute the experimental noise distributions of the linear and angular robot speeds, showing that they are well described by Gaussian functions. We then implement simulations that model this noise by adding Gaussian random variables with the experimentally measured standard deviations. These simulations are performed for multiple parameter combinations and compared to experiments, showing that they provide good predictions for the expected speed and robustness of the self-organizing dynamics.
Ahmad Reza Cheraghi, Abdelrahman Abdelgalil, Kálmán Graffi
This research introduces the design and implementation of a universal systematic 2-dimensional terrain marking and coverage solution. Real world applications such as lawn mowing, mine detection, chemical spill clean-up, and humanitarian search and rescue missions can be automated by employing swarms of autonomous mobile robots to complete the task. In most of these real world applications, efficiency is of utmost importance especially when human lives are involved. The solution proposed builds up on two graph traversal algorithms; Depth First Search (DFS) and Breadth First Search (BFS), where the algorithms are adapted and modified to be utilized for coverage of 2-dimensional isometric grid-like representations of terrains. The solution is developed so that each robot in the swarm would be fully capable of covering and marking any terrain by itself. The efficiency of the solution is optimized by increasing the swarm size, as robots benefit from data sharing in their path planning and self organization within the terrain. Communication between robots enable them to perform on a higher level by benefiting from the collaborative distributed behavior of the swarm as a whole. The communication between particles is decentralized and is carried out at a local level with no need for a central guidance mechanism. Robot abilities in this research are limited, where a robot can see and move only to locations that are adjacent to its current location. A simulation based evaluation is conducted in this research to assess the robots' area coverage and marking performance. The results show that the simulated robot swarm systems are suited for efficient flat area coverage, allowing for redundancy in data collection, and tolerating individual robot errors and shortcomings as the number of robots becomes more abundant.
Factors affecting the reliability of data transmission in networks with nodes with periodic availability were considered. The principles of data transfer between robots are described; the need for global connectivity of communications within an autonomous system is shown, since the non-availability of information on the intentions of other robots reduces the effectiveness of the robotics system as a whole and affects the fault tolerance of a team of independent actors performing distributed activities. It is shown that the existing solutions to the problem of data exchange based on general-purpose IP networks have drawbacks; therefore, as the basis for organizing autonomous robot networks, we used developments in the domain of topological models of communication systems allowing us to build self-organizing computer networks. The requirements for the designed network for reliable message transfer between autonomous robots are listed, the option of organizing reliable message delivery using overlay networks, which expand the functionality of underlying networks, is selected. An overview of existing popular controlled and non-controlled overlay networks is given; their applicability for communication within a team of autonomous robots is evaluated. The features and specifics of data transfer in a team of autonomous robots are listed. The algorithms and architecture of the overlay self-organizing network were described by means of generally accepted methods of constructing decentralized networks with zero configurations. As a result of the work, general principles of operation of the designed network were proposed, the message structure for the delivery algorithm was described; two independent data streams were created, i.e. service and payload; an algorithm for sending messages between network nodes and an algorithm for collecting and synchronizing the global network status were developed. In order to increase the dependability and fault tolerance of the network, it is proposed to store the global network status at each node. The principles of operation of a distributed storage are described. For the purpose of notification on changes in the global status of the network, it is proposed to use an additional data stream for intra-network service messages. A flood routing algorithm was developed to reduce delays and speed up the synchronization of the global status of a network and consistency maintenance. It is proposed to provide network connectivity using the HELLO protocol to establish and maintain adjacency relations between network nodes. The paper provides examples of adding and removing network nodes, examines possible scalability problems of the developed overlay network and methods for solving them. It confirms the criteria and indicators for achieving the effect of self-organization of nodes in the network. The designed network is compared with existing alternatives. For the developed algorithms, examples of latency estimates in message delivery are given. The theoretical limitations of the overlay network in the presence of intentional and unintentional defects are indicated; an example of restoring the network after a failure is set forth.
S. Karthik, N Praveen Chandhar, Murat Akil, Shivani Chander · 6 authors
Swarm robotics is a biologically inspired approach that has been popularly used for tasks that require miniaturisation and fault tolerance at low cost. Constituents in a swarm communicate by means of stigmergy, a mechanism where common information is stored in the environment by the individuals. We model the storage and retrieval of this communication in swarm robotic systems with decentralisation using Blockchain Technology. Blockchain lets a group of agents reach consensus as well as exchange data without the need for a central authority, just like in a swarm. Construction of structures is a common problem that can be solved by using swarm robotics. In this paper, we apply the blockchain approach to decentralisation of swarm systems to construct 2-D structures with blocks in a multi-bot environment as a Proof of Concept.
The paper presents an approach of the blockchain and smart contracts utilization for dynamic robot coalition creation. The coalition is forming for solving complex tasks in industry applications that requires sequential united actions from the several robots. The main idea is that the process is split into two stages: scheduling and dynamic execution. On the scheduling stage, the coalition is defined based on the correlation of existing tasks and robot equipment, and the execution plan is formed and stored in smart contracts. The second stage is the plan execution. During this stage, smart contract controls how each robot solves its sub-task and whether it solves the sub-task due to the planned moment of time. In case of any deviation from the plan, smart contacts will provide a solution for returning to the plan or for changing the coalition composition with new robots and an execution plan. The prototype for execution control system has been developed based on the Hyperledger Fabric platform.
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. This book presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic approach, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let autonomous layout modules interact with each other inside a successively tightened layout zone. Considering various principles of self-organization, remarkable overall solutions can result from the individual, local, selfish actions of the modules. Displaying this fascinating phenomenon of emergence, examples demonstrate SWARM’s suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. From an academic point of view, SWARM combines the strengths of procedural generators with the assets of optimization algorithms, thus p...
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. This book presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic approach, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let autonomous layout modules interact with each other inside a successively tightened layout zone. Considering various principles of self-organization, remarkable overall solutions can result from the individual, local, selfish actions of the modules. Displaying this fascinating phenomenon of emergence, examples demonstrate SWARM’s suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. From an academic point of view, SWARM combines the strengths of procedural generators with the assets of optimization algorithms, thus p...
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. This book presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic approach, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let autonomous layout modules interact with each other inside a successively tightened layout zone. Considering various principles of self-organization, remarkable overall solutions can result from the individual, local, selfish actions of the modules. Displaying this fascinating phenomenon of emergence, examples demonstrate SWARM’s suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. From an academic point of view, SWARM combines the strengths of procedural generators with the assets of optimization algorithms, thus p...
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. This book presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic approach, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let autonomous layout modules interact with each other inside a successively tightened layout zone. Considering various principles of self-organization, remarkable overall solutions can result from the individual, local, selfish actions of the modules. Displaying this fascinating phenomenon of emergence, examples demonstrate SWARM’s suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. From an academic point of view, SWARM combines the strengths of procedural generators with the assets of optimization algorithms, thus p...
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. This book presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic approach, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let autonomous layout modules interact with each other inside a successively tightened layout zone. Considering various principles of self-organization, remarkable overall solutions can result from the individual, local, selfish actions of the modules. Displaying this fascinating phenomenon of emergence, examples demonstrate SWARM’s suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. From an academic point of view, SWARM combines the strengths of procedural generators with the assets of optimization algorithms, thus p...
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. This book presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic approach, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let autonomous layout modules interact with each other inside a successively tightened layout zone. Considering various principles of self-organization, remarkable overall solutions can result from the individual, local, selfish actions of the modules. Displaying this fascinating phenomenon of emergence, examples demonstrate SWARM’s suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. From an academic point of view, SWARM combines the strengths of procedural generators with the assets of optimization algorithms, thus p...