Collective decisions

Goal

Reach consensus: What is the most frequent color? Scalability: Robots can be added to the swarm at any time (to increase accuracy, size of the explored are, speed up process)

Problems

• Noise
• Asynchronicity
• Stochasticity
• Absence of global information/trusted third parties
• AND malicious intruders/failing sensors (Byzantine robots)

Approach

• Define initial swarm (e.g., 10 trusted members)
• Each robot has initial opinion (one of the colors)
• Robots move arbitrarily on the map
• Robots have three functions: Sense, disseminate, receive

FAQ

Q: Why would the robots keep the blockchain running?

• While the incentive to keep the blockchain running among human participants is getting new valuable tokens and guaranteeing the security of existing tokens, the incentive in a blockchain based on robotic participants is more indirect:
  • the robots belong to a person or organization that benefits from the token
  • the robots perform a mission that is useful for someone (probably the initiators of the mission)

Therefore, we can assume that at least some of the robots are programmed to do the right thing and follow the blockchain protocol (block generation).