  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.

Robotics