A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
A customizable conflict resolution and attribute-based access control framework for multi-robot systems
Authors: Salimi, Salma; Keramat, Farhad; Peña Queralta, Jorge; Westerlund, Tomi
Publisher: ELSEVIER
Publishing place: AMSTERDAM
Publication year: 2025
Journal: Journal of Systems Architecture
Journal name in source: JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
Journal acronym: J SYST ARCHITECT
Article number: 103528
Volume: 168
Number of pages: 9
ISSN: 1383-7621
eISSN: 1873-6165
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2025.103528
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2025.103528
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/499785421
As multi-robot systems continue to advance and become integral to various applications, managing conflicts and ensuring secure access control are critical challenges that need to be addressed. Access control is essential in multi-robot systems to ensure secure and authorized interactions among robots, protect sensitive data, and prevent unauthorized access to resources. This paper presents a novel framework for customizable conflict resolution and attribute-based access control in multi-robot systems for ROS 2 leveraging the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. We introduce an attribute-based access control (ABAC) Fabric-ROS 2 bridge to enable secure communication and control between users and robots. By defining conflict resolution policies based on task priorities, robot capabilities, and user-defined constraints, our framework offers a flexible way to resolve conflicts. Additionally, it incorporates attribute-based access control, granting access rights based on user and robot attributes. ABAC offers a modular approach to control access compared to existing access control approaches in ROS 2, such as SROS2. Through this framework, multi-robot systems can be managed efficiently, securely, and adaptably, ensuring controlled access to resources and managing conflicts. Our experimental evaluation shows that our framework marginally improves latency and throughput over exiting Fabric and ROS 2 integration solutions. At higher network load, it is the only solution to operate reliably without a diverging transaction commitment latency. We also demonstrate how conflicts arising from simultaneous control or a robot by two users are resolved in real-time and motion distortion is effectively eliminated.
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Funding information in the publication:
This research work is supported by the Academy of Finland’s RoboMesh project (Grant No. 336061), and by the R3Swarms project funded by the Secure Systems Research Center (SSRC), Technology Innovation Institute (TII).
