PhyTAU¶

PhyTAU (Trusted Autonomy Unit) is a hardware trust module for robots. It runs the PhyTrace agent, collects telemetry from the robot's existing buses, signs PhyUDM events with a hardware-held key, and attests its own boot state to PhyCloud.

PhyTAU comes in two tiers:

• PhyTAU: a TPM 2.0 root of trust for commercial fleets.
• PhyTAU Enterprise: an enterprise-grade root of trust that extends trust to the whole robot and to the AI agents that control it (trusted agentic autonomy).

How it fits¶

graph LR
    subgraph Robot
        B[Robot brain] -- ROS 2 / DDS --> T[PhyTAU]
        C[CAN bus] --> T
        S[Serial / MAVLink] --> T
        T --- K[(TPM 2.0)]
    end
    T -- signed PhyUDM batches + attestation --> P[PhyCloud]
    P --> V[Verification result stored with each event]

PhyTAU joins the robot as a trusted network peer and bus tap. It does not wire into every sensor and it sits in no actuation or safety path.

What PhyCloud can verify¶

What a signature does not prove¶

PhyTAU signs what it receives. If the robot's main computer is compromised and publishes plausible-looking data, PhyTAU will sign it and the signature will verify. Measured boot proves what software was loaded, not that it was never exploited afterwards.

A PhyTAU signature proves provenance and integrity, not truth. Later phases narrow this gap by attesting the robot brain and other components; they do not close it.

Roadmap¶

Status¶