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3rd International Workshop on Blockchain Technologies for Robotic Systems (BCT4ROS'2021)

The workshop will take place in conjunction with The 30th IEEE International (Virtual) Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2021) as a virtual conference on the 8th of August.

Motivation and Objectives

It’s been 11 years since Satoshi Nakamoto unleashed the first blockchain, the Bitcoin, into our lives. Since then, the theoretical and experimental foundations of blockchain systems are becoming increasingly well understood and today the term "blockchain" is not anymore a buzzword. And the the combination of such a ground-breaking technology with robotics, seems to be very promising since it would allow the robotic applications be more secure, flexible, autonomous, and even profitable.

Robotics is an interdisciplinary research area at the interface of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design intelligent machines that can help and assist humans in their day-to-day lives and keep everyone safe. However, it is quite challenging to perform research and development in enabling and fostering the development of autonomous robots and to help such robots become accepted by society. To enable the development of robots that can operate autonomously and safely, important issues like data privacy, security and transparency need to be tackled for the future use of robots in high-sensitive scenarios. Therefore, solutions to these issues might be necessary steps towards mainstream adoption.

Blockchain technologies provide an immutable shared data structure, thanks to the distributed consensus protocols and cryptographic techniques, that can store various kinds of data including program codes (known as smart contracts) that can be deterministically executed the same way by all the participants. Thanks to its characteristics that fit very well the multi-agent systems, blockchain technologies show great potential for making robotic applications more open, trustworthy, secure and tolerant to faults.

Based on this observation, the BCT4ROS workshop series seek to move beyond the classical view of robotic systems to advance our comprehension about the conceivable outcomes and impediments of combining robots with blockchain innovation and intend to bring together specialists active in the scholarly community and industry to share tthe thoughts so far created and talk about the challenges still ahead.. We welcome all papers that address and evaluate the relevance of blockchain technologies to overcome the limitations of robotic systems.

Relevant Topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Trustworthy robot -- human interaction
  • Privacy and security for robotic systems
  • Autonomous cyber-physical systems
  • Blockchain for networked systems and IoT
  • Peer-to-peer and distributed models for robotic systems
  • Self-regulated robotic systems
  • Distributed sensing and coordination
  • Blockchain and mobile systems
  • Blockchain for multi-agent systems
  • Citizen science
  • Decentralized business models for robots
  • Blockchain and Industry 4.0
  • Blockchain and Robot Economics

Program

The workshop is planned to be an on-line half day event. The schedule is as follows:

SESSION 1 (08:50 - 12:00 CET)
09:15 - 09:20 Welcome / Introduction
- Önder Gürcan, Paris-Saclay University, CEA LIST, France
09:20 - 09:45 A Survey of Verification, Validation andTesting Solutions for Smart Contracts
- Chaïmaa Benabbou and Önder Gürcan, Paris-Saclay University, CEA LIST, France
09:45 - 10:30 Trust and the Smart City: a view from Project GenZAI (Moonshot R&D project)
- Toshie Takahashi, School of Culture, Media and Society / the Institute for AI and Robotics, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, USA, and Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, the University of Cambridge, UK.
10:30 - 11:05 Trustworthiness and cooperation - from home automation to citizens’ observatories
- Aleksandr Kapitonov, ITMO University and AIRAlab, St.Petersburg, Russian Federation
11:05 - 11:40 Trust and cooperation in the financing 4th Industrial revolution
- Vitaly Bulatov, Merklebot, CA, USA
11:40 - 12:25 Decentralization at Work and in the City
- Joshua Davila, SettleMint, Brussels, Belgium
12:25 - 12:50 COOPs of Humans, Robots and Ais for the Smart Cities and Countrysides of the future
- Fabio Bonsignorio, Heron Robots, Genoa and Renaissance from the Countryside NGO, Imperia, Italy
12:50 - 13:20 Discussion / Closing
- Fabio Bonsignorio, Heron Robots, Genoa and Renaissance from the Countryside NGO, Imperia, Italy

Program Committee

Aleksandr Kapitonov, ITMO University, St.Petersburg, Russian Federation
Andrea Omicini, University of Bologna, Italy
Eduardo Castelló Ferrer, MIT, USA
Enis Karaaslan, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman Üniversitesi, Turkey
Davide Calvaresi, University of Applied Science Western Switzerland, Switzerland
Joao Sequeira, Institue for Systems and Robotics, Portugal
Marco Dorigo, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Nicholas Jäger, OTH Amberg-Weiden, Germany
Olivier Boissier, Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, France
Öznur Özkasap, Koç University, Turkey
Pierre-Yves Piriou, EDF R&D, France
Sérgio Guerreiro, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Organizing Committee

Önder Gürcan, Paris-Saclay University, CEA LIST, Paris, France
Fabio Bonsignorio, Heron Robots, Genova, Italy

Publication / Proceedings

Accepted submissions will be invited

  • to a post-proceedings book by Springer's Studies in Systems, Decision and Control series (validated). (indexed in ISI, SCOPUS, DBLP, Ulrichs, MathSciNet, Current Mathematical Publications, Mathematical Reviews, Zentralblatt Math: MetaPress and Springerlink),

Workshop Venue

BCT4ROS'2021 will be held in conjunction with The 30th IEEE International (Virtual) Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2021) as a virtual conference (Zoom meeting) on the 12th of August.

Topic: BCT4ROS 2021
Time: Aug 12, 2020 08:30 AM (GMT-4:00) Eastern Time
Join Zoom Meeting Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pRlh4NceQ7K-Kx2vGxqlHA

Registration

Participation to the hosting conference IEEE ROMAN 2021 as well as to BCT4ROS'2021 is totally free of charge (no article processing cost as well).

Contact

For all questions considering the workshop, please use the following e-mail address: bct4ros2021@icloud.com

Previous Editions

  • 2nd International Workshop on Blockchain Technologies for Robotic Systems (BCT4ROS'2020), Naples, Italy.
  • 1st International Workshop on Blockchain Technologies for Robotic Systems (BCT4ROS'2019), Delhi, India.