Development of mobile robot network based on data sharing in the Ethereum platform

Abstract

This paper proposes a data sharing system among multiple networked robots. The system considers the value and the ownership of shared data in the robot networks based on Ethereum blockchain platform. In this system, the owner robot of important data such as grid maps can receive any rewards from the robots which use the shared data. This study aims to achieve robotic ecosystem including data generation, data sharing and reward compensation to the owners. Since this system is intended to be applied to a large number of robots, the simulation is conducted with multiple robots on Unity and Ethereum private chain. In order to approximate the system configuration in the real world, each robot in the simulator is assumed to be controlled by an independent computer system. Then, a Docker container was built for each robot to control the robots based on ROS platform and connect to the blockchain network and Unity. This paper introduces the whole system configuration integrating the robot network Docker containers, ROS system for navigation tasks, data sharing based on Ethereum and the Unity simulator. In the first simulation, the navigation system of multiple robots was executed. Grid map data of unknown areas is shared in this simulation. The results showed that data sharing and transactions among private Ethereum network participants were achieved as designed.