Researchers just figured out how to get robots to join forces

“Take moving on a very rocky terrain,

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for example," says lead author Marco Dorigo, a research director at IRIDIA, the artificial intelligence lab of the University Libre de Bruxelles. "One alone would get stuck, but attached to each other they become more stable and they can move on the rough terrain.”

A single powerful robot needs a redesign every time users come up with a new task for it; a bot built for building things can't be expected to pivot to search-and-rescue missions. But swarm robots can be more flexible. They're also less fragile, en masse, than one large bot, and they're easier to make in large quantities. At the same time, robot swarms provide something a single robot can’t—redundancy.

“Since the swarm is made of many robots, if some of them break down, the others can continue to work,” says Dorigo. It's the equivalent of investing in a whole block of decent kitchen knives instead of spending the same amount on one absurdly good vegetable peeler.