Hundreds of small robots can work in a team to create biology-inspired shapes – without an underlying master plan, purely based on local communication and movement. To achieve this, researchers from EMBL, CRG and Bristol Robotics Laboratory introduced the biological principles of self-organisation to swarm robotics. Science Robotics publishes the results on 19 December.

“We show that it is possible to apply nature’s concepts of self-organisation to human technology like robots,” says EMBL Barcelona group leader James Sharpe. “That’s fascinating because technology is very brittle compared to the robustness we see in biology. If one component of a car engine breaks down, it usually results in a non-functional car. By contrast when one element in a biological system fails, for example if a cell dies unexpectedly, it does not compromise the whole system, and will usually be replaced by another cell later. If we could achieve the same self-organisation and self-repair in technology, we can enable it to become much more useful than it is now.” Sharpe led the project – initiated at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) – together with Sabine Hauert at the University of Bristol.