A swarm of tiny boats that rafts itself together

Tiny robot boats can link up to form a floating island with no one in charge. MIT engineers made each plastic hull about the size of a dinner plate. Each one carries its own motor, sensor, and a foldable magnetic latch. The latch grabs a neighbor across a ten to fifteen centimeter gap. Once locked, the connection uses no power at all. In tests with four boats the swarm hit its target shape ninety percent of the time. With eight boats it worked seventy percent of the time. The whole assembly took four to eight minutes. The idea comes from fire ants that link their bodies into rafts during floods. The study appeared in Nature Communications.

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