DMARCE

About the project

Human-robot interaction keeps growing, and so do the events involving robots. Besides safety and security, robots need explainability systems that let us understand what happened and why, to keep trusting them and to make them accountable. DMARCE investigates how to meet these requirements with state-of-the-art robot software frameworks.

Following the EU guidelines for trustworthy AI, the project addresses four requirements: accountability, transparency, privacy, and technical robustness and safety. The result is the design, development and evaluation of software that provides explainability to autonomous robots, translating robot behaviour into human language while taking the cybersecurity dimension into account.

Subprojects

Publications and results

Journal

• 2025 Towards a robotic intrusion prevention system: Combining security and safety in cognitive social robots. Francisco Martín , Enrique Soriano-Salvador , José Miguel Guerrero , Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz , Juan Carlos Manzanares , Francisco J. Rodríguez Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 15 March 2025, 104959 DOI
• 2025 Generating Explanations for Autonomous Robots: A Systematic Review. D. Sobrín-Hidalgo, Á. Manuel Guerrero-Higueras and V. Matellán-Olivera, in IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 20413-20426, 2025 DOI
• 2025 SAILOR: perceptual anchoring for robotic cognitive architectures. Miguel Á. González-Santamarta, Francisco J. Rodrıguez-Lera, Vicente Matellan-Olivera, Virginia Riego del Castillo & Lidia Sánchez-González Scientific Reports 15, 113 (2025) DOI
• 2025 A systematic literature review of unsupervised learning algorithms for anomalous traffic detection based on flows. Alberto Miguel-Diez, Adrian Campazas-Vega, Claudia Alvarez-Aparicio, Gonzalo Esteban-Costales, Angel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras, Logic Journal Of The Igpl, Acceptance Date, 2025 Apr 24 DOI
• 2025 Improving Accountability and Explainability in Robots through Encryption, Large Language Models, and Visual Language Models. Laura Fernandez-Becerra, David Sobrin-Hidalgo, Miguel González-Santamarta, Angel Guerrero-Higueras, Francisco Rodríguez Lera, Vicente Matellan Olivera, Logic Journal Of The Igpl, Acceptance Date, 2025 Apr 24 DOI
• 2025 Implementing a Robot Intrusion Prevention System (RIPS) for ROS 2. Enrique Soriano-Salvador, Francisco Martín-Rico and Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz. 2024. Under revision. Preprint: arXiv Link
• 2025 User-space library rootkits revisited: Are user-space detection mechanisms futile?. Enrique Soriano-Salvador, Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz, Juan González Gómez. Under revision. Preprint: arXiv Link
• 2025 The Reverse File System: Towards open cost-effective secure WORM storage devices for logging. Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz, Juan González-Gómez, Enrique Soriano-Salvador. Accepted for publication in Computers and Security (Elsevier). Preprint: arXiv Link
• 2024 Accountability as a service for robotics: Performance assessment of different accountability strategies for autonomous robots. Laura Fernández-Becerra, Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras, Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Lera, Vicente Matellán, Logic Journal of the IGPL, Volume 32, Issue 2, April 2024, Pages 243–262 DOI
• 2024 A robot-based surveillance system for recognising distress hand signal. Virginia Riego del Castillo, Lidia Sánchez-González, Miguel Á González-Santamarta, Francisco J Rodríguez Lera, Logic Journal of the IGPL, 2024; DOI
• 2024 Open source robot localization for nonplanar environments. Rico, F.M., Hernández, J.M.G., Pérez-Rodríguez, R., Peña-Narvaez, J.D. & Gómez-Jacinto, A.G. Journal of Field Robotics, 41, 1922–1939. (2024) DOI
• 2024 Optimized network for detecting burr-breakage in images of milling workpieces. Virginia Riego del Castillo, Lidia Sánchez-González, Nicola Strisciuglio, Logic Journal of the IGPL, 2024; DOI
• 2024 Robocup 2023-2024 ROSbag Dataset. Irene González Fernández , Juan Diego Peña Narváez , José Miguel Guerrero Hernández , Rodrigo Pérez Rodríguez , Alejandro González Cantón , Francisco Javier Rodríguez Lera Data in Brief, ISSN: 2352-3409, 2024, Volume: 57 DOI
• 2023 Detecting and bypassing frida dynamic function call tracing: exploitation and mitigation. Enrique Soriano-Salvador and Gorka Guardiola-Múzquiz. Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques. Volume 19, pages 503–513 (2023). Journal article DOI
• 2023 SealFSv2: combining storage-based and ratcheting for tamper-evident logging. Gorka Guardiola-Múzquiz and Enrique Soriano-Salvador. International Journal of Information Security. 2022-12-06. Volume 22, pages 447–466 (2023). Springer Nature DOI
• 2023 MERLIN2: MachinEd Ros 2 pLanINg. Miguel Á. González-Santmarta, Francisco J. Rodríguez-Lera, Camino Fernández-Llamas, Vicente Matellán-Olivera, Software Impacts, Volume 15, 2023, 100477, ISSN 2665-9638 DOI
• 2023 Regulated pure pursuit for robot path tracking. Macenski, S., Singh, S., Martín, F. et al. Autonomous Robots 47, 685–694 (2023) DOI
• 2023 A visual questioning answering approach to enhance robot localization in indoor environments. Peña-Narvaez JD, Martín F, Guerrero JM and Pérez-Rodríguez R. Frontiers on Neurorrobotics (2023). DOI: 1 DOI
• 2023 Malicious traffic detection on sampled network flow data with novelty-detection-based models. Campazas-Vega, A., Crespo-Martínez, I.S., Guerrero-Higueras, Á.M. et al. Sci Rep 13, 15446 (2023) DOI
• 2023 SQL injection attack detection in network flow data. Ignacio Samuel Crespo-Martínez, Adrián Campazas-Vega, Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras, Virginia Riego-DelCastillo, Claudia Álvarez-Aparicio, and Camino Fernández-Llamas. Compututer Security 127, C (Apr 2023) DOI
• 2023 Analyzing the influence of the sampling rate in the detection of malicious traffic on flow data. Campazas-Vega, A., Crespo-Martínez, I. S., Guerrero-Higueras, Á. M., Álvarez-Aparicio, C., Matellán, V., & Fernández-Llamas, C. (2023). Computer Networks, 235, 109951 DOI

Conferences

• 2025 Accessible and Pedagogically-Grounded Explainability for Human–Robot Interaction: A Framework Based on UDL and Symbolic Interfaces. Francisco J. Rodríguez Lera; Raquel Fernández Hernández; Sonia Lopez González; Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Santamarta; Francisco Jesús Rodríguez Sedano; Camino Fernandez Llamas 2025 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) DOI
• 2025 On-Edge Task Planning with Large Language Models for Service Robotics. Alejandro González-Cantón, Miguel A. González-Santamarta, Francisco J. Rodriguez Lera, Ángel M. Guerrero-Higueras, Irene González-Fernández & Francisco Martín-Rico , International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems, HAIS 2025, Salamanca, Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 16203)) Link
• 2025 Definiendo el concepto de explicación: propuesta de una taxonomía para explicabilidad en robótica. David Sobrín Hidalgo, Ángel Manuel Guerrero Higueras, Francisco Javier Rodríguez Lera, Vicente Matellán Olivera. Actas de las X Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad, Zaragoza, Junio 2025 Link
• 2025 Aportes para el cumplimiento del Reglamento (UE) 2024/1689 en robótica y sistemas autónomos. Francisco J Rodríguez Lera, Yoana Pita Lorenzo, Laura Fernández Becerra, David Sobrín Hidalgo, Irene González Fernández, José Miguel Guerrero Actas de las X Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad, Zaragoza, Junio 2025 Link
• 2025 Environmental Sound Recognition for Human-Robot Interaction in Social Robots. Irene González Fernández, David Sobrín-Hidalgo, Juan Diego Peña-Narvaez, Francisco J. Rodríguez Lera, Camino Fernández Llamas, and Francisco Martín. Hybrid Artificial Intelligent Systems (HAIS 2025), Salamanca (Spain), Nov 2025 Link
• 2025 Socarrat en mi Raspberry Pi: Aunque rasques, no podrás borrar estos ficheros. Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz and Enrique Soriano-Salvador. RootedCON 2025, Criptored Con track, Madrid, Spain. March 2025
• 2025 Socarrat: Building Cost-Effective Secure WORM Devices Following the Reverse File System Approach. Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz and Enrique Soriano-Salvador. ACM EuroSys 2025, poster track. Rotterdam, Netherlands. March 2025
• 2025 Cybersecurity Challenges in Autonomous Robots: The Link Between Explainability and Decision-Making Risks. European Robotics Forum, 25-27 Marzo 2025. Stuttgart. CS4R - Cybersecurity for robotics WS
• 2025 Socarrat for Plan 9: building 9P WORM Devices. Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz and Enrique Soriano-Salvador. 11th International Workshop on Plan 9. May 22-24, 2025, Paris
• 2024 Explicabilidad aplicada a ciberseguridad en sistemas autónomosUn enfoque basado en LLMs para la detección forense de amenazas. David Sobrín-Hidalgo Irene González-Fernández Miguel Ángel González-Santamarta Adrián Campazas-Vega Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Lera Vicente Matellán-Olivera Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad (JNIC) (9ª.2024. Sevilla) (2024), pp. 644-651 Link
• 2024 Cascade LifeCycle: A Convenient Building Block for Efficient Robot Software Architectures. Peña-Narvaez JD, Martín F, Guerrero JM and Pérez-Rodríguez R. Proceedings of the 2024 7th Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT), Madrid, Spain, 2024, pp. 1-7 DOI
• 2024 Performance Impact of Strengthening the Accountability and Explainability System in Autonomous Robots. Alejandro González Cantón, Miguel Angel Gonzalez Santamarta, Francisco J Rodríguez Lera, Enrique Soriano Salvador and Gorka Guardiola Muzquiz. Accepted for publication. Proceedings of the CISIS 2024 (17th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems). To be published in Lecture Notes in Network and Systems (LNNS), Springer DOI
• 2024 Defining a Standard Blockchain-based Black Box for Autonomous Systems. Inyesto-Alonso, Laura | Sobrín-Hidalgo, David | Álvarez-Aparicio, Claudia | Campazas-Vega, Adrián | Guerrero-Higueras, Ángel M. | Matellán Olivera, Vicente Proceedings of the XXIV Workshop of Physical Agents. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante. ISBN 978-84-09-63822-2, pp. 46-59 Link
• 2024 An Approach Based on LLMs for Forensic Threat Detection in Autonomous Systems. David Sobrín-Hidalgo, Irene González-Fernández, Miguel Ángel González-Santamarta, Adrián Campazas-Vega, Claudia Álvarez-Aparicio, Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras, Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Lera & Vicente Matellán-Olivera International Joint Conferences. ICEUTE CISIS 2024 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 957. Springer, Cham DOI
• 2024 Fuzzing Robotic Software Using HPC and LLM. Francisco Borja, G.D.R., Lera, F.J.R., Llamas, C.F., Olivera, V.M. (2024). International Joint Conferences. ICEUTE CISIS 2024 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 957. Springer, Cham. h DOI
• 2024 Evaluating Sniffers, IDS, and IPS: A Systematic Literature Mapping. Raúl Bayón-Martínez, Laura Inyesto-Alonso, Adrián Campazas-Vega, Gonzalo Esteban-Costales, Claudia Álvarez-Aparicio, Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras & Vicente Matellán-Olivera International Joint Conferences. ICEUTE CISIS 2024 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 957. Springer, Cham DOI
• 2024 Cybersecurity Issues in Robotic Platforms. Campazas-Vega, A., Miguel-Diez, A., Hermida-López, M., Álvarez-Aparicio, C., Crespo-Martínez, I. S., & Guerrero-Higueras, Á. M. (2024). Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Business Information Security, BISEC 2023. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 3676, 4-11 Link
• 2023 Accountability and Explainability in Robotics: A Proof of Concept for ROS 2- And Nav2-Based Mobile Robots. Fernández-Becerra, L., González-Santamarta, M.A., Sobrín-Hidalgo, D., Guerrero-Higueras, Á.M., Lera, F.J.R., Olivera, V.M. (2023). In: García Bringas, P., et al. International Joint Conference 16th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems (CISIS 2023) 14th International Conference on EUropean Transnational Education (ICEUTE 2023). CISIS ICEUTE 2023 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 748. Springer, Cham DOI
• 2023 Ciberseguridad en sistemas ciberfísicos: entorno simulado para la evaluación de competencias en ciberseguridad en sistemas con capacidades autónomas. David Sobrín Hidalgo; Laura Fernández Becerra; Miguel A. González Santamarta; Claudia Álvarez Aparicio; Ángel Manuel Guerrero Higueras ; Miguel Ángel Conde González; Francisco J. Rodríguez Lera; Vicente Matellán Olivera Actas de las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad: Vigo, 21 a 23 de junio de 2023 / coord. por Yolanda Blanco Fernández Árbol académico, Manuel Fernández Veiga Árbol académico, Ana Fernández Vilas Árbol académico, José María de Fuentes García-Romero de Tejada Árbol académico, 2023, ISBN 978-84-8158-970-2, págs. 461-467 Link
• 2023 Using Large Language Models for Interpreting Autonomous Robots Behaviors. González-Santamarta, M.Á., Fernández-Becerra, L., Sobrín-Hidalgo, D., Guerrero-Higueras, Á.M., González, I., Lera, F.J.R. (2023). In: García Bringas, P., et al. Hybrid Artificial Intelligent Systems. HAIS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14001. Springer, Cham. DOI: 978-3-031-40725-3_45 DOI
• 2023 Portable Multi-Hypothesis Monte Carlo Localization for Mobile Robots. A. García, F. Martín, J. M. Guerrero, F. J. Rodríguez and V. Matellán, (2023). 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 1933-1939 DOI
• 2023 RIPS: Robotics Intrusion Prevention System. Enrique Soriano-Salvador and Gorka Guardiola Múzquiz. ROSCon Madrid 2023. September, 2023. Slides deck Link
• 2023 llama_ros:Unleashing the power of LLMs as Embedded AI in Robotics. Miguel Á. González-Santamarta ROSCon Madrid 2023. September, 2023. Slides deck Link
• 2023 Fuzzing Robotic Software Using HPC. Del Río, F.B.G., Lera, F.J.R., Llamas, C.F., Olivera, V.M. (2023). In: García Bringas, P., et al. International Joint Conference 16th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems (CISIS 2023) 14th International Conference on EUropean Transnational Education (ICEUTE 2023). CISIS ICEUTE 2023 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 748. Springer, Cham. 978-3-031-42519-6_3 DOI

Preprints

• 2023 ROXIE: Defining a Robotic eXplanation and Interpretability Engine. Rodríguez-Lera, F. J., González-Santamarta, M. A., González-Cantón, A., Fernández-Becerra, L., Sobrín-Hidalgo, D., & Guerrero-Higueras, A. M. (2024). arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.16606 Link
• 2023 Pyramidal Explainability for Convolutional Neural Networks. Riego del Castillo, Virginia and Sánchez-González, Lidia. 2025. Under revision. Preprint: SSRN DOI

Public Repositories

• 2023 GitHub: Immutable & Explainable Black Box Recorder Link
• 2023 GitHub: Accountability and Explainability: Nav2 Link
• 2023 GitHub: Accountability using Sysdig y Kafka Link
• 2023 GitHub: Explainability in ROS 2 with LLMs Link
• 2023 GitHub: Llama_ROS y Llava_ROS Link
• 2023 GitHub: Docker-based accountability solution based on Sysdig, Librdkafka producer, Kafka and MongoDB Link
• 2023 GitHub: RIPS: Robotics Intrusion Prevention System Engine and monitor Link Link
• 2023 GitHub: SealFSv2 and ROS 2 adapter Link Link
• 2023 GitHub: XRSF: eXtended Robotics Security Framework Link

Demos/Experiments

• 2023 Demo 0: RIPS scenario, no attacks. Robocup's receptionists.
• 2023 Demo 1: In this experiment, we model a scenario wherein an unauthorized entity gains access to the data stream containing video footage captured by the robot's front-facing camera. RIPS detects the anomalous behavior and disables the front camera.
• 2023 Demo 2: RIPS detects an unauthorized use of the navigation service and forbids the navigation within a restricted zone.
• 2023 Demo 3: RIPS is monitoring the topics of the system and inspecting the messages. It uses a YARA rule to detect a signature of the malicious payload. To mitigate the attack, RIPS activates a System Mode to halt the robot.