Simulating hostile attacks of physical autonomous systems can be a useful tool to examine their robustness to attack and inform vulnerability-aware design. In this work, we examine this through the lens of multi-robot patrol, by presenting a machine learning-based adversary model that observes robot patrol behavior in order to attempt to gain undetected access to a secure environment within a limited time duration. Such a model allows for evaluation of a patrol system against a realistic potential adversary, offering insight into future patrol strategy design. We show that our new model outperforms existing baselines, thus providing a more stringent test, and examine its performance against multiple leading decentralized multi-robot patrol strategies.
@article{arxiv.2509.11971,
title = {Time-Constrained Intelligent Adversaries for Automation Vulnerability Testing: A Multi-Robot Patrol Case Study},
author = {James C. Ward and Alex Bott and Connor York and Edmund R. Hunt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.11971},
year = {2025}
}