Researchers have demonstrated a decentralised approach to governing robot swarms whose membership can change during operation.
The proposed system uses a blockchain-based decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO, to manage admission and removal of robots without relying on a privileged central authority. Smart contracts encode membership rules intended to protect open swarms against faulty or malicious participants. Simulations and experiments with physical robots indicate that this approach can maintain swarm operation while limiting Byzantine infiltration. The work addresses a practical problem for autonomous collectives: how to preserve cooperation and security when participants can arrive or depart dynamically.
