Skip to main content

Alpha This is a new website theme. Help me improve it and give your feedback (opens in a new tab).

High-latency messaging via lego robot courier

Published:

Tags:

Security Robotics
This blog post is more than two years old. It is preserved here in the hope that it is useful to someone, but please be aware that links may be broken and that opinions expressed here may not reflect my current views. If this is a technical article, it may no longer reflect current best practice.

Wireless doesn’t necessarily have to mean radio waves. If you’re worried about people listening in on your conversations, why not use a courier instead?

This is a solution I developed as part of my degree programme at the University of Aberdeen. At each end are two VT100 terminals, these connect to the robot through tin foil contacts at each end of the board. A switch on the robot lets it know that it’s hit the wall and (hopefully) docked with the contacts. The robot then spits out any message it was carrying and asks for another message by displaying a prompt on the terminal and then storing the input. Once the Enter key has been hit, it travels back again to the other terminal.

Remember though, no solution is truly secure, this is still open to man in the middle attacks and the robot can be easily confused by anyone with enough black tape.

See the courier in action on YouTube.

Contact