Cyber-Attacks on Wheeled Mobile Robotic Systems with Visual Servoing Control

Visual servoing represents a control strategy capable of driving dynamical systems from the current to the desired pose, when the only available information is the images generated at both poses. In this work, we analyze vulnerability of such systems and introduce two types of attacks to deceive visual servoing controller within a wheeled mobile robotic system. The attack goal is to alter the visual servoing procedure in such a way that mobile robot achieves the pose defined by an attacker instead of the desired one. Specifically, the attacks exploit image transformations developed using a methodology based on simulated annealing. The main difference between the attacks is the considered threat model - i.e., how the attacker has infiltrated the system. The first attack assumes the real-time camera feed has been compromised and thus, the images from the current pose are modified (e.g., during the acquisition or communication); for the second, only the desired destination image is potentially altered. Finally, in 3D simulations and real- world experiments, we show the effectiveness of cyber-attacks.