K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
New commercial robots are changing what’s possible in the physical world. They are tackling increasingly complex tasks beyond early uses such as manufacturing assembly lines and material handling in warehouses.
For example, ABB’s PixelPaint uses a pair of high-precision robotic arms to make car painting faster and more customizable. Adidas’s STRUNG is a textile-industry-first robot that uses athlete data to make perfectly fitting shoes. And this year, the world has watched in fascination as NASA’s one-ton rover Perseverance and tiny helicopter Ingenuity explored Mars.
Artificial intelligence and other advances will accelerate robots’ ability to sense and adapt to their environment. Robotics companies are eagerly developing new machines with ever more impressive functionality. Many are built on the Robot Operating System (ROS), which is the de-facto open-source framework for robot application development. (My company chairs the initiative’s security group.)
So the robot future is coming. But robot developers must not lose sight of a critical priority: security.
Robots are far more capable if connected to the internet. That allows them to work with other robots and access enterprise IT systems and the cloud so they can process and learn from huge amounts of remotely stored data. Connectivity also provides agility for quick bug patching or system reconfiguration.
But even if placed behind a firewall, inadequately secured robots may not be safe. We’ve already seen malware that breaches isolated networks — for instance, the Stuxnet malware attack. But that occurred more than 10 years ago. Today’s malware is far more effective. If the malware has a hold on a network and a robot is the unpatched, unsecured link in the chain, the robot will open the door to attackers.
The bottom line: We need to acknowledge that robots are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Imagine the damage that could be done if a hacker was able to maliciously hijack and control robots being used in, say, a healthcare setting.
I worry that many companies, in their focus on development, are paying too little attention to crucial security questions as they approach production.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/28/we-underestimated-iot-security-lets-not-make-that-mistake-with-robotics/
For example, ABB’s PixelPaint uses a pair of high-precision robotic arms to make car painting faster and more customizable. Adidas’s STRUNG is a textile-industry-first robot that uses athlete data to make perfectly fitting shoes. And this year, the world has watched in fascination as NASA’s one-ton rover Perseverance and tiny helicopter Ingenuity explored Mars.
Artificial intelligence and other advances will accelerate robots’ ability to sense and adapt to their environment. Robotics companies are eagerly developing new machines with ever more impressive functionality. Many are built on the Robot Operating System (ROS), which is the de-facto open-source framework for robot application development. (My company chairs the initiative’s security group.)
So the robot future is coming. But robot developers must not lose sight of a critical priority: security.
Robots are far more capable if connected to the internet. That allows them to work with other robots and access enterprise IT systems and the cloud so they can process and learn from huge amounts of remotely stored data. Connectivity also provides agility for quick bug patching or system reconfiguration.
But even if placed behind a firewall, inadequately secured robots may not be safe. We’ve already seen malware that breaches isolated networks — for instance, the Stuxnet malware attack. But that occurred more than 10 years ago. Today’s malware is far more effective. If the malware has a hold on a network and a robot is the unpatched, unsecured link in the chain, the robot will open the door to attackers.
The bottom line: We need to acknowledge that robots are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Imagine the damage that could be done if a hacker was able to maliciously hijack and control robots being used in, say, a healthcare setting.
I worry that many companies, in their focus on development, are paying too little attention to crucial security questions as they approach production.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/28/we-underestimated-iot-security-lets-not-make-that-mistake-with-robotics/
