RAPTOR: Role-Based Access Policy Tooling for Operating Robots

Abstract

Secure ROS 2 (SROS2) provides cryptographic authentication and access control for ROS 2 deployments, but requires administrators to manually author per-node permission XML with no support for roles, inheritance, or visual audit. This flat, per-enclave model is systematically error-prone: a static scan of 124 public SROS2 policy files from 60 GitHub repositories finds that 69 % contain at least one error that would either prevent deployment or violate the intended security boundary at runtime. This paper presents RAPTOR, a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) framework for ROS 2 policy management, together with a graphical desktop tool that implements it. Roles are arranged as a directed acyclic graph from which effective permissions are computed by breadth-first inheritance traversal and flattened into the per-enclave format SROS2 requires. An error injection study over 18 representative malformed-policy scenarios confirms that the validation pipeline detects or corrects every injected configuration fault. A dual-canvas graphical interface provides continuous visual audit of the permission topology, and a preflight review dialog annotates the full effective permission set per enclave by source role before any credential is signed.