The Promise of Swarms

Have you ever observed ants? They are so simple creatures but show a very complex collective social behavior. They are able to find food hundreds of meters away, build mounds thousands of times their own height, form complex hunting strategies etc. Each ant follows just a few simple rules that are based on their ability to track scent but the resultant task of these simple ants is mind boggling.
This collective behavior, often known as Swarm Intelligence, is found among different species in nature and has led researchers to study the scope, limitations and potential applications in fields like robotics, search, navigation and collaborative task handling.
Out of the many applications of collaborative swarm algorithms, Swarm Robotics seems to be an interesting one. Similar to ant behavior, imagine a number of very simple machines following simple rules but are able to do a very complicated robust search operation in hostile conditions. DARPA has been actively investing in Swarm Robotics for a similar reason. People in universities like MIT and CMU are studying the theoretical and practical capabilities and limitations of existing swarm-based approaches for robotics research applications.
Annual robotics competitions like Robosoccer are a few small pointers to the growing interest in this field.
These swarm based approaches have significant advantages over centralized approaches. They are evolutionary, they degrade gracefully and most importantly they are robust! No doubt swarm-based approaches are going to be building blocks of next generation technology.

This reminds me of a saying by a famous economist Kevin Kelly

"The surest way to smartness is through massive dumbness!".

...And inspired by this I write a poem

"Look at the ants
and look at the bees.
Each one is dumb
but everyone has the keys.
The keys to behave
however simple it might be.
But together they are
invincible as you can see."