Kilobot swarm robot. (L) A Kilobot robot, shown alongside a US penny for scale. (M) Each Kilobot has an onboard microcontroller for executing programs autonomously, two vibration motors for moving straight or turning on a flat surface, and a downward-facing infrared transmitter and receiver for the communication with others. Self-assembly experiments use up to 1024 physical robots. (A), (C), and (E) Desired shape provided to robots as part of their program. (B), (D) Self-assembly from initial starting positions of robots (left) to final self-assembled shape (right). (F) Completed assembly showing global warping of the shape due to individual robot errors. (G) Accuracy of shape formation is measured by comparing the true positions of each robot (red) and each robot’s internal localized position (gray). H–K Close-up images of starting seed robots (Reprinted with permission from Ref. [130], Copyright c 2016, AAAS).