Abstract
The increase in the role of companion robots in everyday life is inevitable, and their safe communication with the infrastructure is one of the fundamental challenges faced by designers. There are many challenges in the robot’s communication with the environment, widely described in the literature on the subject. The threats that scientists believe have the most significant impact on the robot’s communication include denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, satellite signal spoofing, external eavesdropping, spamming, broadcast tampering, and man-in-the-middle attacks. In this article, the authors attempted to identify communication threats in the new robot-to-infrastructure (R2I) model based on available solutions used in transport, e.g., vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), taking into account the threats already known affecting the robot’s sensory systems. For this purpose, all threats that may occur in the robot’s communication with the environment were analyzed. Then the risk analysis was carried out, determining, in turn, the likelihood of potential threats occurrence, their consequence, and ability of detection. Finally, specific methods of responding to the occurring threats are proposed, taking into account cybersecurity aspects. A critical new approach is the proposal to use communication and protocols so far dedicated to transport (IEEE 802.11p WAVE, dedicated short-range communications (DSRC)). Then, the companion’s robot should be treated as a pedestrian and some of its sensors as an active smartphone.
Highlights
The increase in the role of companions robots in everyday life is inevitable
The analysis conducted in this article presents threats identified within these attributes that need to be maintained in wireless networks (GSM, 802.22), including car DSRC networks
When it comes to messages exchanged between wireless network nodes (cell phone with robot companion SIM card, robot companion WiFi network card, robot companion on-board unit (OBU) and GSM base stations, WiFi access points, and car network RSUs), the threats to confidentiality primarily involve the collection of files associated with location information through retransmitting broadcast messages [42,43,44]
Summary
The increase in the role of companions robots in everyday life is inevitable. The unexpected coronavirus pandemic highlighted that the possibility of goods and services being provided in a safe, contactless, and sterile way is of great significance. The need to limit mobility and interpersonal contacts, especially among the elderly, requires searching for new solutions that would reduce human participation in these activities to a necessary minimum These two phenomena are a straightforward premise to conduct research and development work on a robot companion, the primary objective of providing custodial care services. The multitude of threats related to the communication of the companion’s robot with the environment leads to the formulation of the research question posed in this article: is secure communication in the robot-to-infrastructure (R2I) model possible? Identifying the most critical threats and assessing the possibility of their implementation in the communication of the companion’s robot was shown Once it was identified how the R2I communication might be affected, the analysis of risk in terms of consequences, probability, and potential causes was conducted. The article has the following structure: introduction (1), state of the art (2), communication interfaces of a robot companion (3), an analysis of communication-related information threats within the R2I model (4), risk assessment and analysis (5), the concept of implementing mechanisms protecting the communication interfaces of a robot companion (6), conclusions (7)
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