Security in Robot Operating Systems (ROS): analytical review study

The Robotic Operating System (ROS) is a popular framework for robotics research and development. It's a system that provides hardware abstraction with low-level device management to handle communications and services. ROS is a distributed system, which allows various nodes in a network to communicate using a method such as message passing. When integrating systems using ROS, it is vital to consider the security and privacy of the data and information shared across ROS nodes, which is considered to be one of the most challenging aspects of ROS systems. The goal of this study is to examine the ROS architecture, primary components, and versions, as well as the types of vulnerabilities that might compromise the system. In order to achieve the CIA's three fundamental security criteria on a ROS-based platform, we categorized these vulnerabilities and looked into various security solutions proposed by researchers. We provide a comparative analysis of the ROS-related security solutions, the security threats and issues they addressed, the targeted architecture of the protection or defense system, the solution's evaluation methodology and the evaluation metric, and the limitations that might be viewed as unresolved issues for the future course of action. Finally, we look into future possibilities and open challenges to assist researchers to develop more secure and efficient ROS systems.