We’re living in a world now where most of the items surrounding us are ‘smart’ – they operate autonomously, respond when we talk to them and even predict our behaviour. That includes our cars. The safety of our cars no longer rests solely on you – the driver or keeper of the keys – but now also on the engineers producing the software of the internal computer.
Advancements in robotics over the last couple of decades have paved the way for useful real-world applications for robots – yet before entrusting them with key tasks, we need to ensure that these systems are safe to use, and secure from external threats (such as hacking).
The device you are using to read this article is based on a centralised, monolithic architecture – a processor core steering a number of other components into executing tasks. Most of our technological systems work this way, because it’s us humans who lead, telling them what to do – we are the intelligence.