Väitös (tietotekniikka): MSc Salma Salimi

MSc Salma Salimi esittää väitöskirjansa ”Trustable Collaborative Multi-robot Systems with Distributed Ledger Technology” julkisesti tarkastettavaksi Turun yliopistossa maanantaina 21.9.2026 klo 12.00 (Turun yliopisto, Medisiina C, Osmo Järvi -sali, Kiinamyllynkatu 10, Turku).

Vastaväittäjänä toimii apulaisprofessori Azwirman Gusrialdi (Tampereen yliopisto) ja kustoksena professori Tomi Westerlund (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen. Väitöksen alana on tietotekniikka.

Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:

Robots are increasingly used together in areas such as industry, warehouses, inspection, monitoring and service applications. When several robots, users or organisations work within the same system, questions of security, trust and coordination become important. This dissertation investigates how distributed ledger technologies, especially the permissioned blockchain platform Hyperledger Fabric, can be used to make collaborative multi-robot systems more secure, transparent and reliable.

One of the main results of the research is that Hyperledger Fabric can be connected with Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2), a widely used software framework for robotics, without preventing robots from operating in practical applications. The blockchain introduces some additional communication delay compared with direct ROS 2 communication, but the experiments show that the performance remains suitable for higher-level tasks such as monitoring, access management, coordination and collaborative decision-making. The work therefore shows that blockchain can be used as an additional trust layer rather than as a replacement for existing robotic software.

Another key result is a flexible method for managing who is allowed to control a robot. In situations where several users have access to the same robotic system, the developed approach can prevent unauthorised access and conflicting commands. The access rules can be changed dynamically without modifying the underlying robot software. This can help make shared robotic systems safer and easier to manage in environments where several people or organisations use the same robotic resources.

The dissertation also demonstrates how blockchain-based smart contracts can support cooperation between different robots. The studied applications include collaboration between ground and aerial robots, mission coordination and the allocation of roles between robots for positioning. The results show that these decisions can be made in a transparent and verifiable way while keeping the additional computational load relatively small.

The final part of the research focuses on interaction between humans and robots. Small Ultra-Wideband radio devices placed on the human body are used to measure distances, and machine-learning methods interpret these measurements to recognise body postures. The recognised postures can then be translated into commands for ground and aerial robots. The experiments show that this method can support real-time robot control and can reduce problems that camera-based systems may face, such as blocked views or difficult environmental conditions.

Overall, the research shows that distributed ledger technologies can complement existing robotic systems by improving identity management, access control, traceability and coordination. The results can contribute to safer and more trustworthy multi-robot systems in future applications where robots, people and organisations need to work together and share robotic resources.