AgentBlock: A Conceptual Framework Integrating Multi-Agent Robotic Systems and Blockchain Technology for Decentralized Industrial Automation with Expert Validation
Main article
Abstract
Modern industrial automation increasingly demands systems that combine autonomous operational flexibility with verifiable security and transparent accountability---requirements that existing centralized automation architectures struggle to satisfy simultaneously. Multi-agent robotic systems (MARS) provide distributed autonomous coordination capabilities that enable flexible, resilient task execution across complex manufacturing and logistics environments, but current MARS architectures lack immutable audit trails and cryptographic security guarantees that industrial compliance and inter-organizational trust requirements demand. Blockchain technology (BCT) offers these security properties through distributed ledger immutability, smart contract automation, and cryptographic identity verification, yet BCT alone cannot provide the real-time distributed coordination intelligence of MARS. This paper proposes AgentBlock, a novel conceptual framework that systematically integrates the distributed autonomous coordination capabilities of MARS with the immutable verification, cryptographic security, and data transparency features of BCT in a three-layer architecture. The methodology combines comprehensive literature synthesis, formal conceptual model development using UML and component diagrams, and dual-phase validation: expert evaluation via structured survey (n = 89 industrial and academic experts across six sectors) and comparative theoretical performance analysis against centralized MAS, distributed MAS without BCT, and BCT-only baselines. Expert validation results indicate strong consensus: 89% agreement on operational efficiency improvements, 86% validation of security architecture soundness, and 81% recommendation for industrial deployment readiness. Theoretical performance analysis demonstrates that AgentBlock achieves 2.0x throughput improvement over centralized MAS, 62% latency reduction, and 94% fault recovery rate. The Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism selected for AgentBlock scales to 100-node networks with confirmation times under 7 seconds, outperforming PBFT (58.7 s) and PoW (27.8 s) at equivalent scale. The framework advances industrial information integration by providing a principled architecture for trustworthy, decentralized, and transparent multi-robot industrial systems.
