Cyber-Physical Steganography in Robotic Motion Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel steganographic method in robotic motion control, encoding messages through environmental stimuli affecting robot trajectories, demonstrated via simulations with multimodal policies.

Contribution

It presents a new paradigm for steganography in robotics by leveraging environmental influences on motion, expanding the scope of information hiding techniques.

Findings

Successful encoding and decoding of messages through robot motion trajectories

Effective concealment achieved with minimal impact on robot performance

Demonstrated robustness across various manipulation tasks in simulation

Abstract

Steganography, the art of information hiding, has continually evolved across visual, auditory and linguistic domains, adapting to the ceaseless interplay between steganographic concealment and steganalytic revelation. This study seeks to extend the horizons of what constitutes a viable steganographic medium by introducing a steganographic paradigm in robotic motion control. Based on the observation of the robot's inherent sensitivity to changes in its environment, we propose a methodology to encode messages as environmental stimuli influencing the motions of the robotic agent and to decode messages from the resulting motion trajectory. The constraints of maximal robot integrity and minimal motion deviation are established as fundamental principles underlying secrecy. As a proof of concept, we conduct experiments in simulated environments across various manipulation tasks, incorporating robotic embodiments equipped with generalist multimodal policies.