“Robotic swarms are compelling for researchers, civilian and military alike, because they offer functionality through interchangeable components. Much of the promise of swarm robotics wants the machines to be as cheap and disposable as possible, while the swarm as a whole is still capable of performing tasks, even when components fail. For now, research like this kilobot swarm assembly will remain in the lab, but the potential implications of cheap robots that can communicate and coordinate as effectively and simply as demonstrated here could be huge. Everything from structure reassembly to patterns of self-healing armor to autonomous scouting clusters could potentially be derived from studies like this.”

Source: Watch a swarm of 300 robots reorganize autonomously