Programmable self-assembly in a thousand-robot swarm
Abstract
Large-scale robotic self-assembly: When individuals swarm, they must somehow communicate to direct collective motion. Swarms of robots need to deal with outliers, such as robots that move more slowly than the rest. Rubenstein et al. created a large swarm of programmed robots that can form collaborations using only local information. The robots could communicate only with nearby members, within about three times their diameter. They were able to assemble into complex preprogrammed shapes. If the robots' formation hit snags when they bumped into one another or because of an outlier, additional algorithms guided them to rectify their collective movements. Science , this issue p. 795
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“However, their onboard batteries, sensors, and processors are difficult to be miniaturized to submillimeter scale (29).”
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“Similarly, Rubenstein et al. proposed a thousand-robot swarm capable of self-assembling into larger, potentially interactive, shapes [39].”
BackgroundProbabilistic and Distributed Control of a Large-Scale Swarm of Autonomous Agents
Bandyopadhyay, S., Chung, S., & Hadaegh, F. Y. (2017) · IEEE Transactions on Robotics · doi:10.1109/tro.2017.2705044 · Cited by 110 · see citing works
“1) [2]–[8] or exploring an unknown environment [9]–[14].”
BackgroundBicomponent Supramolecular Architectures at the Vacuum–Solid Interface
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“Experiments of integrated flocking, formation and localization implemented with large swarm of robots can be found in [147], where 1024 robots named Kilobot are programmed to perform swarming and self-assembling by using only limited local information.”
Controlling multiple microrobots: recent progress and future challenges
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“[17] have a thousand centimeter scale robot (Kilobot) swarm each with onboard power, sensing, and computation capability to study the swarm behavior in nature.”
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Learning Without Neurons in Physical Systems
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“It has been experimentally demonstrated that MASs can accomplish complex swarm tasks only through local interactions between individuals, making the central node unnecessary (S. Li et al., 2019; Rubenstein et al., 2014).”
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“We present a non-exhaustive list: the Kilobot algorithm achieves complex two-dimensional shapes and was demonstrated on a thousand-agent testbed (Rubenstein et al., 2014); the Op-timotaxis source-searching algorithm is inspired by the run and tumble behaviors of bacteria (Mesquita et al., 2008);…”
MethodSelf-reconfigurable multilegged robot swarms collectively accomplish challenging terradynamic tasks
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Machine learning for micro- and nanorobots
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“Traditional robot swarms have deterministic behaviours driven by individual actuation/control 41 , but swarm behaviours become much more complex at micro-and nanoscales.”
Light-Driven Hovering of a Magnetic Microswarm in Fluid
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Multi-Robot Assembly Strategies and Metrics
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“…communications may either be explicit in that messages of intent are directly conveyed between robots with or without goals defined a priori (e.g., Rubenstein et al. (2014)), or implicit in that the robots must infer intent by means of sensor-based observations given a shared goal (e.g., Tambe…”
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“be individually actuated [20], [22] and at millimeter scale that distributed actuator networks are applicable to be implemented for individual robot control [21], robots at microscale can hardly”
BackgroundDomino Reaction Encoded Heterogeneous Colloidal Microswarm with On‐Demand Morphological Adaptability
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Increasingly Intelligent Micromachines
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Stem cell bioengineering: building from stem cell biology
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Micro/Nanorobotic Swarms: From Fundamentals to Functionalities
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A robot made of robots: Emergent transport and control of a smarticle ensemble
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A Modular Dielectric Elastomer Actuator to Drive Miniature Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
Berlinger, F., Duduta, M., Gloria, H., Clarke, D. R., Nagpal, R., & Wood, R. J. (2018) · Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation/Proceedings · doi:10.1109/icra.2018.8461217 · Cited by 94 · see citing works
“robotics and swarms of untethered robots [8].”
Self-citationMorphological Evolution of Physical Robots through Model-Free Phenotype Development
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Autonomous task sequencing in a robot swarm
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“We could adopt locally unique IDs, which have been successfully demonstrated with a swarm of 1000 robots (9).”
Background
- Authors
- Rubenstein, M., Cornejo, A., & Nagpal, R.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Rubenstein, Michael
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2014-08-15
- Volume
- 345
- Issue
- 6198
- Pages
- 795-799
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2030775133
- Semantic Scholar
- c5ab840850ab57f2f14b67a5485fa3fd727b33b8
- Cited by
- 1,266
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 87 · 2025: 124 · 2024: 108 · 2023: 122 · 2022: 118 · 2021: 109 · 2020: 104 · 2019: 136 · 2018: 114 · 2017: 91 · 2016: 73 · 2015: 68 · 2014: 11
- FWCI
- 94.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Condensed Matter Physics › Micro and Nano Robotics
- Keywords
- programmable self-assembly, swarm robotics, shape formation, decentralized systems, autonomous robots, local interactions, artificial swarms, two-dimensional shapes
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