Credit: Mike Rubenstein and Science/AAAS/ Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
1K (1024), centimeter size robots, each capable of following some simple programming rules, & communicating with the others by infrared, can co-operate to form complex shapes.
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2014/08/self-organizing-thousand-robot-swarm / thousand robot flash mob assembled Harvard University form sea star shape computer scientist command 1,024 little bots via infra-red light robots blink gradually arrange themselves five-pointed star letter K Kilobots simple robots three pin-like legs complex robot collaborate simple platform complex behaviors actions individual cells assemble intelligent organism starlings collective behaviour form a great flowing murmuration across the sky Kilobots demonstrate complexity can arise from very simple behaviors performed en masse computer scientists development of collective artificial intelligence AI two-dimensional image simple rules flock of birds wheeling across the sky individuals collective entity Radhika Nagpal self-organizing swarm Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences SEAS Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University biological systems large numbers collective entity biological collectives cooperation cooperating entities cells insects animals single task magnitude beyond the scale of any individual behavior colony of army ants social amoebas microscopic scale: when food is scarce fruiting body
