Swarm robots are in vogue now.  Yeah, it was cool when one robot did something neat, like Asimo or the RiSE wall crawler, but why have one big expensive robot when a million little ones will do the same job?  The internet is abuzz with examples of swarm robotics, where many little robots join forces to complete a task much more in depth than one robot could manage.  For these robots, the finished product truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

Swarm robotics is in its infancy, these days.  Robots are just now being made capable of communicating with each other in real-time, meaning that a band of small robots can get together and really make a difference.  No, they aren’t capable of volunteering at soup kitchens just yet, but these small robots can already do some pretty neat things.

This first video gives a good overview of what swarm robotics is now and what it is capable of in the future.  Researchers are hoping that these robots will be able to navigate autonomously and even self-heal if damaged.  Currently, they still working on how to get the robots to interact with each other, but the finished product that is shown seems like a useful gadget:

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