Real-Time Coordination of a Foraging Robot Swarm Using Blockchain Smart Contracts.

We present a novel control scheme for robot swarms that exploits the computation layer of a blockchain to coordinate the actions of individual robots in real-time. To accomplish this, we deploy a blockchain smart contract that acts as a “decentralized supervisor” during a swarm foraging task. Our results show that using blockchain-based global coordination rules can improve the foraging behavior of robot swarms, while maintaining a decentralized, scalable, and democratic system in which every robot contributes homogeneously to the decision-making process.