Beanbag Robotics: Robotic Swarms with 1-DoF Units

Robotic swarm behavior is usually demonstrated using groups of robots, in which each robot in the swarm must possess full mobile capabilities, including the ability to control both forward and reverse motion as well as directional steering. Such requirements place severe constraints on the cost and size of the individual robots (swarmers), limiting the number of units and constraining the overall minimal size of a swarm. Here we show that similarly-complex swarm behavior can be achieved using much simpler individual swarmers. These possess significantly fewer controllable degrees of freedom, namely the ability to move forward at different velocities. We demonstrate how the interaction between different units then causes the entire swarm to obtain maneuverability unavailable at the individual level. These results may open the door to fabrication of simpler and smaller units for swarms allowing significantly larger numbers of units and smaller overall swarm footprints.