from IEEE Spectrum [click for full article]
When Harvard researchers first introduced their Kilobot project in 2011, they had built only 25 of the little robots. Two years later, they announced that they had made 100 robots. Now the researchers say they have built one thousand Kilobots—possibly the most robots that have ever been operating in the same place at the same time. The Harvard team is now teaching the robots to behave like a swarm, organizing and controlling themselves based on a set of simple rules, much like in biological systems. Learn how each Kilobot works and watch a video of the swarm forming different shapes.