Secure IoT Communication Frameworks for Industrial Robotics

Abstract

Industrial robotics has become one of the fundamental pillars of Industry 4.0 and the emerging Industry 5.0 paradigm, where intelligent automation, collaborative robots, and cyber-physical production systems continuously exchange large volumes of operational data through Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks. While IoT-enabled robotic platforms significantly improve manufacturing efficiency, predictive maintenance, remote monitoring, and autonomous decision-making, they simultaneously introduce substantial cybersecurity risks arising from heterogeneous communication protocols, distributed edge devices, and cloud-based control infrastructures. Traditional industrial communication architectures primarily focused on reliability and deterministic performance, often overlooking advanced security mechanisms capable of defending against sophisticated cyberattacks such as spoofing, replay attacks, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), ransomware, and unauthorized robotic command injection. This study proposes a secure IoT communication framework specifically designed for industrial robotic environments by integrating lightweight encryption, blockchain-assisted device authentication, edge-based intrusion detection, artificial intelligence-enabled anomaly detection, and secure MQTT/OPC UA communication protocols. The proposed architecture enhances confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, and real-time communication while minimizing computational overhead. Comparative analysis demonstrates improvements in communication latency, packet delivery ratio, authentication accuracy, intrusion detection rate, and network resilience when compared with conventional industrial IoT security mechanisms. The proposed framework provides a scalable and intelligent cybersecurity solution suitable for autonomous manufacturing, collaborative robotics, smart factories, and Industry 5.0 applications where secure machine-to-machine communication is critical.