Application Scenario

• General properties for a application scenario
  • Robots work remotely, without real-time supervision (e.g., deep sea, planetary exploration, or underground)
  • Robots should be fully autonomous (that is no single point of failure, no one can just press a button and stop them)
  • The swarm can add new members at any time (there is no need of authentification, any robot can join)
  • The swarm members are untrusted, however, but the blockchain can be trusted
  • Physical Proof of Work
  • Robots possibly belong to different organizations (e.g. collaboration between different countries)

• Q: Why do you use physical robot and not just simulation?
  • The goal is to pave the way for real-world robot task -> physical robots show a proof-of-concept

• Q: Why don't you just use a classicial consensus algorithm?

• Q: Why don't you use a authentification system to only include trusted members?
  • A classical authentification system can be easily compromised (e.g., once the password is revealed, the entire system breaks down)
  • The swarm is more flexible without a authentification system: everyone can join at any time