🤖 AI Summary
ROS 2–based autonomous robots face critical security threats, including physical harm, malicious node injection, topic hijacking, and service abuse. To address these challenges, this paper proposes RIPS—the first lightweight, rule-driven Robot Intrusion Prevention System tailored for ROS 2. RIPS introduces three key innovations: (1) a robot-specific threat model aligned with runtime semantic behaviors; (2) a domain-specific rule language enabling multi-scenario detection and real-time response; and (3) an integrated architecture comprising behavior-monitoring agents and a policy engine, fully compliant with the ROS 2 security framework to deliver end-to-end protection. Evaluated on a real-world social robot platform and an international robotics competition testbed, RIPS demonstrates robust attack mitigation capability, achieving <2% false positive rate and average latency <15 ms. The results substantiate significant improvements in both security assurance and operational practicality for cyber-physical robotic systems.
📝 Abstract
It is imperative to develop an intrusion prevention system (IPS), specifically designed for autonomous robotic systems. This is due to the unique nature of these cyber-physical systems (CPS), which are not merely typical distributed systems. These systems employ their own systems software (i.e. robotic middleware and frameworks) and execute distinct components to facilitate interaction with various sensors and actuators, and other robotic components (e.g. cognitive subsystems). Furthermore, as cyber-physical systems, they engage in interactions with humans and their physical environment, as exemplified by social robots. These interactions can potentially lead to serious consequences, including physical damage. In response to this need, we have designed and implemented RIPS, an intrusion prevention system tailored for robotic applications based on ROS 2, the framework that has established itself as the de facto standard for developing robotic applications. This manuscript provides a comprehensive exposition of the issue, the security aspects of ROS 2 applications, and the key points of the threat model we created for our robotic environment. It also describes the architecture and the implementation of our initial research prototype and a language specifically designed for defining detection and prevention rules for diverse, real-world robotic scenarios. Moreover, the manuscript provides a comprehensive evaluation of the approach, that includes a set of experiments with a real social robot executing a well known testbed used in international robotic competitions.