Rise of the machines? Tiny robot horde swarms to form shapes

HIVE MIND: The Kilobots, a swarm of 1,000 simple but collaborative robots, is making a little bit of history for automatons everywhere.

WASHINGTON: They look vaguely like miniature hockey pucks skittering along on three pin-like metal legs, but a swarm of small robots called Kilobots at a laboratory at Harvard University is making a little bit of history for automatons everywhere. 

Researchers who created a battalion of 1,024 of these robots said on Thursday the mini-machines are able to communicate with one another and organise themselves into two-dimensional shapes like letters of the alphabet.