A perspective of security for mobile service robots

Abstract

Future homes will contain Mobile Service Robots (MSR) with diverse functionality. MSRs act in close proximity to humans and have the physical capabilities to cause serious harm to their environment. Furthermore, they have sensors that gather large amounts of data, which might contain sensitive information. A mobile service robot’s physical capabilities are controlled by networked computers susceptible to faults and intrusions. The proximity to humans and the possibility to physically interact with them makes it critical to think about the security issues of MSRs. In this work, we investigate possible attacks on mobile service robots. We survey adversary motivations to attack MSRs, analyse threat vectors and list different available defence mechanisms against attacks on MSRs.