Work

Guarded Swarms: Building Trusted Autonomy Through Digital Intelligence and Physical Safeguards

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Autonomous UAV/UGV swarms increasingly operate in contested environments where purely digital control architectures are vulnerable to cyber compromise, communication denial, and timing faults. This paper presents Guarded Swarms, a hybrid framework that combines digital coordination with hardware-level analog safety enforcement. The architecture builds on Topic-Based Communication Space Petri Nets (TB-CSPN) for structured multi-agent coordination, extending this digital foundation with independent analog guard channels—thrust clamps, attitude limiters, proximity sensors, and emergency stops—that operate in parallel at the actuator interface. Each channel can unilaterally veto unsafe commands within microseconds, independently of software state. The digital–analog interface is formalized via timing contracts that specify sensor-consistency windows and actuation latency bounds. A two-robot case study demonstrates token-based arbitration at the digital level and OR-style inhibition at the analog level. The framework ensures local safety deterministically while maintaining global coordination as a best-effort property. This paper presents an architectural contribution establishing design principles and interface contracts. Empirical validation remains future work.

Source: Future Internet

DOI: 10.3390/fi18010064

Authors: Uwe M. Borghoff, Paolo Bottoni, Remo Pareschi

Institutions: Universität der Bundeswehr München, Sapienza University of Rome, University of Molise

Language: English

Topic: Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems

Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,930